


i know you better than anyone

by jameaterblues



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Canon Compliant, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, F/M, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Leaves of Grass, Literati, Missing Scene, New York City, Personal Growth, Playgrounds, Reconciliation, Studying, The Subsect, Walt Whitman - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28039017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jameaterblues/pseuds/jameaterblues
Summary: “This isn’t you, Rory. You know it isn’t.”After Jess reads Rory the riot act in 6.08, she reflects on their relationship: who she was, who she wanted to be, and who he saw her as a teenager. Falls in the timeline between 6.08 and 6.10, with flashbacks to seasons 2-4. Notes for each chapter include the episodes in which the flashback scenes would (presumably) take place. #literati
Relationships: Rory Gilmore & Jess Mariano, Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Comments: 18
Kudos: 75





	1. prologue

"Jess, wait," Rory called out. "Jess, I'm sorry."  _ Fuck. _

He shook his head. "We shouldn't have done this."

"He's just in a bad way lately," she pleaded. It was true that Logan had been off - but he also had a wicked jealous streak, and Jess certainly wasn’t about to back down from it. 

"He's a jerk." She watched him say it with such disdain, like he’d written off everything and everyone in Stars Hollow.

"He was. In there, definitely. I'm so sorry." She found herself apologizing, again and again, for Logan, by instinct. Trying to write off the worst parts of the evening, salvage it for something better so she could say it was better off. 

"I read that guy the second I saw him. I should have begged off." She was watching his frustration bubble up and out like he was eighteen again. Like always, he looked upset about something else, something bigger than the words coming out of his mouth. His mind was running faster than he could express, and like she couldn’t read him. They were stuck at an impasse.  _ Everything else he’s talked about has been fine _ , she thought.  _ This can’t just be Logan pissing him off.  _

"Well, I didn't want you to."

"He better not come out here," he said, pointing back at the restaurant.  _ God, of all the places, we really had to have a tet-a-tet at the Joe’s Burgers outside of Hartford? Surely there were better places for old boyfriends to meet and for her to fail to bridge them.  _

"Please, Jess. He had a lot to drink. He's tired from traveling. This isn't him. I swear." She’d wanted this to work out - to be able to do the grown-up thing, to be able to look past this and catch up with Jess, and introduce Logan to one of her friends for once.  _ This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. What the hell is going on? _

"What the hell is going on?"

_ Guess he can still read my mind sometimes.  _ "I told you. He's tired, and his family's bugging him right now."

"No, no. I mean with you. What's going on with you?"

She furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. I know you better than anyone. This isn't you."

"I don't know,” she said defensively.  _ I don’t, I really don’t.  _

"What are you doing? Living at your grandparents' place, being in the DAR, no Yale...why did you drop out of Yale?!"

Immediately, without thinking, her guard went up. "It's complicated."  _ Luke got to him, I guess. Which means my mother got to him.  _

"It's not! It's not complicated."

"You don't know." She felt the words bubbling up inside her, trying to defend herself.  _ He doesn’t know about anything. He hasn’t been here for the last year, year and a half. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t -  _

"This isn't you. This, you going out with this jerk, with the Porsche. We made fun of guys like this." 

That one stung - they had made fun of guys like this, once upon a time, but it wasn’t something she had thought of in terms of her life now. That was high school, when they were both a lot more invested in the Beat poets of the sixties and she was venting about Chilton. "You caught him on a bad night," Rory pleaded. She wasn’t really listening to Jess so much as she was trying to keep herself from breaking down in front of him.  _ I can’t have this conversation now.  _

"This isn't about him. Okay, screw him. What's going on with you? This isn't you, Rory. You know it isn't. What's going on?"

"I don't know! I don't know," she blurted, the words finally tumbling out of her. As she stood in this burger joint, she felt the opposite of grounded. She felt like she was seventeen again, frustrated and scared and wanting to say so many things but so unsure of what to say about anything. 

And just like the old Jess, that softened his resolve. It was as though he had also felt it, too - the rise and fall back into their old rhythms - and it had melted him back down in the face of confusion and softness. "Hey, uh... may-may-maybe we'll catch up at a better time." He started to leave, but stopped and turned around. "Happy birthday, by the way. Wasn't that a couple weeks ago, your birthday?"

Rory nodded, and Jess looked relieved as he smiled and went back to his car.

She watched him leave, not yet ready to go back in the restaurant and tell of Logan.  _ They're both just being jerks _ , she thought.  _ But he's just being Jess. _

The night wasn't supposed to go like this - it wasn’t supposed to be this hard, falling into new rhythms with Jess. She was so happy to see him last night, and this had felt so easy - nothing like before, like the last time she had seen him -  _ god _ ,  _ I don’t want to think about last time.  _ It was supposed to be easy. It was going to be easy. And now it wasn’t. 

_ In some ways, this was almost like last time.  _ Jess showing up at an inopportune time, another guy at present, having to turn away someone in order to deal with the other. If she wasn’t in such a state, she might’ve chuckled. Instead, she took a deep breath. She didn’t have time to run through this. She had to deal with the other new part of the rhythm waiting back inside the restaurant. 

Still, it stuck with her.  _ I know you better than anyone _ . She wanted to react that he didn’t - he hadn’t known her in years at this point, they hadn’t had much of a conversation. But he was the first one to ask it out loud and to ask her directly.  _ God, wasn’t he so good at that.  _ When she thought back to being 15, he did know her then - he could always see right through, and he knew almost everything. Once upon a time, he did know her better than anyone. 


	2. someone he respects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jess and Rory have a tutoring session, and he sees right through her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode S2E19: Teach Me Tonight. Pre-car crash? It doesn’t work timeline-wise but just work with me.

The whole ride back from Hartford that Friday, she’d had this feeling of - excitement? nervousness? pride? - about tutoring Jess. They’d met a few times so far, every day after school - it wasn’t working all that well. She’d tried to get his list of assignments for the week from Lane so they were prepared to work on something together, but half the time he spent distracting her or asking about Dean. Still, she found herself looking forward to their afternoons together. As she got off the bus, she couldn’t quite figure out what this feeling was. 

The feeling quickly faded into disappointment - and then frustration - to find he wasn’t even waiting for her.  _ Why am I looking forward to spending time with someone who can’t even be here?”  _

“I’m sorry, Rory. I told him to be here,” Luke shouted from behind the counter, distracted by something Caesar was doing in the kitchen. “I don’t know where he is, but - ”

She frowned. “That’s okay, Luke. I have a hunch.”

He waved her off, and she went back out the doorway into the street. She looked around the square, nodded, and headed straight for her destination. 

Sure enough, walking into Stars Hollow Books, she saw him. He was tucked away towards the back, sprawled out on the staircase and deeply lost in thought with a well-worn paperback. He didn’t seem phased at all by the door bell ringing. 

“You’re supposed to be at Luke’s,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. 

“Seems like you found me anyway,” he said without lifting his nose from whatever he was reading. 

“C’mon, we have to get to studying.”

“Someone’s in a hurry to get started.”

“I’m not in that much of a hurry, but I did just get off of a 1 hour bus ride with two transfers  _ and  _ I have my own work to do before tonight.”

“Let me just finish this chapter,” he said as he flipped a page, turning to look up at her for the first time. “Surely a book snob like you wouldn’t take that away from me.”

She pursed her lips. “Fine.” He smirked, and she watched as his eyes turned back to the page. He was so focused, so intense as he scanned each line, taking in whatever he was reading, she tried to glance at the cover, but couldn’t make it out from this angle. Whatever it was, Jess was enraptured. Not that she’d admit it, and she felt just a little guilty for even thinking it, but it was attractive to see him so caught up in something like that. Though she wasn’t sure if she was intrigued by the person or the book... _ stop it. I should be thinking of Dean anyway. _

“It does  _ not  _ take you that long to - “

“Hey! Don’t interrupt!” He pointed with his book at her. “It’ll only take longer. Don’t ruin the experience.”

Another minute went by before he slowly closed the book, stuffing it in his back pocket. “Okay, we can go now.” 

“You can’t take that. You have to pay for it.”

He put a finger to his lips. “Not like anyone needs to know. The guy’s not even here.”

She rolled her eyes. “The guy’s name is Andrew. And you should pay for that. What are you reading anyway?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He placed it on the counter with a grand display before following Rory out. 

“You seemed pretty interested.” 

“Bukowski,” he grunted, tugging at the pockets on his jacket, standing just behind her. 

“Oh yeah?” she looked over at him. “Which book?” 

“ _ Notes of a Dirty Old Man _ .” 

“Ha, the sexism is strong with this one.”

“Well, once you get past that - “

“It’s half the book, but sure.” 

“Have you read him?”

“Of course, I’ve read him,” she scoffed. “We had to read some of his poems for English last year. Paris ranted about him for most of the module but she did relent when we followed him up with Diane Di Prima.”

“Paris?” He ran up the steps and opened the door to Luke’s for her. 

“My classmate,” she said, brushing past him on their way inside. 

“Di Prima’s pretty good, but - ”

“You found him!” Luke shouted from the counter. “Hey, you can’t keep her waiting. Rory is going out of her way to - ”

“We’re here, we’re studying,” Jess waved off, taking a seat at one of the empty tables. Rory sat across from him, placing her bookbag on the floor. “And we already got our literature discussion out of the way, right, Rory?”

She smiled. “Yeah. Can we get some fries, Luke?” 

* * *

Tutoring Jess wasn’t so much of a tutoring session as it was him dragging his feet to do much of anything, before they could each work independently and her nagging him to get through an assignment. If anything, he was tutoring her - he’d helped her with the history paper she was trying to get through. Still, she liked having someone to work with - and to talk with about some of this other stuff he kept trying to bring up. It was nice to see him light up about some things - so much of his time in Stars Hollow seemed gloomy and she - well, she liked being a part of that light. 

She looked at her watch, winced, and started packing up. “We’ll have to continue this on Monday.”

“What’s the rush?” Jess asked, leaning onto the table.

“It’s Friday.” She stuffed a notebook and the textbook in between her copy of the Gorbachev biography that was the pick of the week. 

“Got a hot date with your boyfriend?”

“I told you, Dean’s back in Chicago. Friday night, I go to dinner at my grandparents’ in Hartford.”

“Every Friday?”

Rory shrugged. “Most Fridays. That’s the deal: they pay for school and Mom and I eat.”

“Sounds fun,” he grunted.

“On its better days. Occasionally ends like the dinner in  _ The Birdcage _ .”

“Your mom runs a drag club in South Beach?” 

“She was a pregnant teenager, ran away to Stars Hollow, years of resentment from the blue-blooded Gilmores.” 

“Classic.”

She reached into her backpack, and, thinking for a moment, pulled out the book from the side pocket and dropped it on the table in front of them. 

“What’s this?”

“A different assignment. I want your notes.”

His eyes lit up at the challenge. “What makes you think I haven’t read it?”

“You haven’t?” 

“I read a lot more than beat poets, Gilmore.” She didn’t let it show, but she was sort of impressed - she had issued it as a challenge, a statement of her own literary intelligence, and was already eager to see what new insights he might have to give her. 

She zipped up her backpack. “We can meet again on Monday? I’ve plans with Dean this weekend. And if you read that, we can discuss it, and  _ then  _ you need to study.”

He nodded, taking the book into his hands. “You give him assignments like this one?”

“It’s not really his thing. Outside of  _ Lord of the Rings,  _ he’s much more traditional - Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote. He doesn’t really read what you and I -” she gestured with her hands flippantly.

“ _ Naked Lunch _ isn’t his style?” 

She wrinkled her nose. “Not really mine, either.” 

He flipped through the copy, fanning through the pages. “I’ll get it back to you.”

“It’s my only copy, and I need you to take good care of it. I don’t lend my books to just anyone. And only pencil this time - promise?”

“Promise.”

Her heart skipped a beat, just slightly, just for a second. She could feel it flutter - a sort of wake-up call that she’d never noticed before.  _ Huh.  _

* * *

Back at Luke’s on Monday, she’d nearly forgotten about the book assignment. She pulled out her history assignment and textbook. “So what are we starting with today?” 

He pulled out  _ The Dispossessed _ from his back pocket. “You didn’t tell me you left your own.”

She blushed. “I don’t like writing in my books much.” 

“You wrote in this one.” 

“Ursula deserves it. Besides, I wanted your feedback.” She sat down at the table, taking a sip of her water. 

“How was your weekend with  _ Dean _ ?” He sneered on Dean’s name, using it to get to her in some way. 

“It was fine.”

“Sounds sexy.”

“You want to start with history? Mr. Correia’s exams were always rough. Plus I have some world stuff to work on, too. We can tag-team it?”

“You show Dean these notes?”

“No,” she said quickly, taking the copy from his hand. “Like I said, he’s not really into this as much.” 

“I liked the exclamation points near Shevek’s thoughts about Vea.” 

“Yeah?” She’d used the exclamation points as a marker for a paper idea she was working on regarding sexual violence and Le Guin’s feminism.  _ A little surprising a Bukowski fan would jump to that spot in particular. _

“A little punctuation says a lot.”

“What’s it say to you?” She met his gaze for a second, inquisitive as he was about what the answer would mean. 

“What’s the book mean to you?” he deflected. 

“It’s - well, it’s in the title. An ambiguous utopia. Redefining freedom.”

“So you think Shevek is free.”

“No, I think quite the opposite.”

“So you’re a capitalist.”

“I don’t think that’s fair to say either.”

“Say more.” He was quick, and his banter steady, and she felt her pulse race at the chance to get frisky in the literary sense of the word. 

“Shevek doesn’t feel at home in either place. He’s not totally satisfied by the anarchist conception of freedom, but it certainly seems better than the world he deals with in Urras.”

“But what about for you?”

“Anarres is good, but it’s not perfect. Urras isn’t perfect at all.”

“Have you read other stuff of hers?”   
“Yeah, I made it through the Hainish Cycle a few years ago when I was going through a real sci-fi phase.”

“How about the short stories? Did you read ‘The Day Before the Revolution’ too?”   
“I haven’t gotten my hands on it. Andrew’s been trying to get the collection for me though. Have you?”

“No, I was hoping you’d have a copy for me next.” 

She held back her excitement - that flutter again. It was nice to talk to someone about books, especially the ones she didn’t get to share with anyone else. It was like a better version of English class, tinted with the tiniest bit of flirting.  _ I’m not flirting _ , she countered.  _ He is, though.  _

“What do you see him?” he said, pulling back from the table. 

“What?”

Jess shrugged. “He doesn’t read.”   
“Dean reads,” she huffed, pulling back the copy of  _ The Dispossessed _ and stuffing it in her bag.

“Reading to him doesn’t count.”

“He reads on his own! We just connect on other things.”

Jess scrunched his mouth to the side sourly. “Hm, can’t imagine the guy’s a good kisser.”

Rory blushed. “We’re not talking about this.” She hadn’t kissed anyone else, though she did have a feeling that perhaps Dean wasn’t always perfect. Especially lately, when his 

“So he is a good kisser? Shocking.” 

“He’s - he’s my boyfriend. And he’s sweet and he’s patient and he knows when to drop a conversation, which is more than I can say for you.” She took a deep breath - she often talked fast, but all of that came out in one breath. 

Jess paused for a moment. “Sounds like a very loyal Lassie.” 

She bit her tongue. _ It does, doesn’t it?  _ “Loyalty is important in a partner.” 

“It’s not everything. And it certainly doesn’t keep you warm at night.”

The goosebumps on her skin prickled on her arm. “So, what are we working on today?” 

“What do you connect on, then? He dotes on you, but that doesn’t make a relationship.”   
“Oh, so you’re a romantic now?”

“Are you happy? With him, does he make you - happy? Does he get you hot and bothered with  _ Howl _ ?” He was getting under her skin, poking at little things like this. Worse, he could see it getting to her. And worse still, it was highlighting all the things she was starting to see in her relationship with Dean.  _ Is it really that obvious?  _   
“Jess, I swear to God, we need to study.” 

“You said we could talk about books.”

“And we did. And now we’re studying.” 

He smirked. “You’re so easy to rile up, Gilmore.”

She didn’t say anything, opening up the book in front of her.  _ I only wish I could get under your skin like that.  _


	3. you didn’t say goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Episode S2E21: Lorelai’s Graduation Day. Rory meets Jess in Washington Square Park.

It was an ordinary morning in most ways, except for the tiny nagging voice telling her to go to New York. It had started as just a thought - a  _ what-if  _ that just crosses one’s mind in the occasional daydream as she was brushing her teeth. But it didn’t pass - it kept growing, as she took her first bus out of Stars Hollow, and then the second bus to Hartford. It was all sort of a blur from then on, the impulsiveness of this strange thought pushing her forward to the Greyhound, and then to Port Authority, one bus to the next, one street after another, until she reached a destination.

Washington Square Park was just as he described it. She and Mom had strolled through it before - last time, they had gone window shopping down Sixth Avenue and tried to find some incredible pizza place Lorelai had read about in the guidebook. But she hadn’t thought about it much then as anything more than another location in a very big city in a very big place. 

She could see him from a distance, just as he said he would be - sitting on the bench, reading a book. She couldn't make out what the book was, but she could make out his profile - deep in thought, his hair swooped up just a little bit. She smiled - suddenly all the confusion of getting here seemed to make sense - like maybe she'd found a little bit of home.

She walked up behind him. "Hi."

He turned around, looking up at her. There wasn't even a hint of confusion in his face, or even the angst that seemed to emanate from back in Stars Hollow. He looked a little ragged, a little roughed-up, but something about him was brighter. It was like he was expecting her to be there. "How ya doing?"  _ His voice.  _ It was good to hear him, to see him, to see he was okay. 

"Good, how about you?"

"Good. You hungry?"

"Starved." She hadn't eaten since she left Stars Hollow, and even that was just a Pop Tart she had stashed.

"I know a place."

* * *

He hadn’t asked yet what she was doing here, or if everything was okay for her. He just seemed to go with the fact that she had appeared in New York on a Thursday, thinking that was the most normal thing in the world. And she hadn’t asked him anything either - not anything real or personal, just bantering about New York. 

She chewed on the salt bagel, oozing cream cheese. Jess had insisted she get anything else -  _ “It’s way too salty, you won’t be able to handle it” _ . He was right - it was pretty disgusting - but it was just the right amount of disgusting that she was going to power through for the time being. Jess still had his in its bag with a strawberry schmear. He’d tried to convince her it was worth it, but she wanted to stick to the absolute tradition. Besides, watching him eat the strawberry schmear and wiping the slightest bit of her lip was pleasure enough: she’d be able to hold that over him for the rest of his life. 

As they walked around Manhattan, she was enamored with how natural he was here. When he had talked about the Lower East Side back in Stars Hollow, the memories made him antsy, jumpy, like he couldn't reconcile his New York life beside his new Connecticut one. But here, she could understand it. Here, he wasn't fast-paced but at the same speed as everyone else; his brashness with the quirky townies wasn't all facade but a holdover from this world. More importantly, she could almost see him as a person, not this mysterious stomping around her hometown. Things made sense.

They had sat back down in Washington Square Park to finish eating their bagels when a group of students ploughed their way through the arch. Rory took note of them immediately - the size of the group, their loud and boisterous manner, the way they acted like they owned the space. They looked like they were coming back from class -  _ probably between finals, it’s about that time of year. _

"Here comes the Stern students," sneered Jess, noticing Rory's gaze shift.

"Future Enron employees?"

"You know it," said Jess, before his interest returned to the records they bought and the bagel he was eating.

They bantered a bit longer, poking fun at the NYU students. But Rory found her mind wandering, watching them closely as if to see herself in their place.  _ Of course, the dream is Harvard. _ But she had been working on her longlist: NYU was somewhere on the "maybes", well towards the bottom, but somewhere above Boston College. She watched the gaggle of students make their way over to the fountain. They certainly stood out among the rest of the crowd, laughing and joyful as some of them started pulling large black fabric out of their bags. They gleefully waved the billowing fabric around as they each took them out, placing caps on their head.  _ Oh, they’re celebrating. It’s graduation. _

She found herself drawn to one girl, wearing a green sweater with a preppy collar and leopard print cuffs, a leather pencil skirt. It was something a little more funky than she would choose to wear herself -  _ maybe Mom would _ , she thought,  _ on one of her more fashion forward days _ . The girl looked like she would fit right in among the Puffs at Chilton, or the Heathers at Westerburg. But she looked so at ease, talking with a few others in the group. It was the kind of blissful ignorance and ease she could never quite grasp in a social setting.

The girl leaned over to the guy next to her, who looked almost like he was wearing a Chiliton uniform for himself. She whispered something in his ear, started playing with his tie in the process. Watching them voyeuristically from a distance, this minor intimacy in broad daylight made her shiver, especially next to Jess. She and Dean were handsy, but certainly not  _ that _ much. 

"What are you thinking about, Gilmore?"

She snapped back from the scene. "I'm just - watching them." She nodded in the direction of the NYU students.

Jess groaned. "The worst. Think they're New Yorkers because they've lived here nine months. You should see them in fall, all walking around with their purple lanyards." His crooked lip shaped into a scowl. "They're all rich, white, liberal, artsy kids."

She laughed. "Oh, because you fit in so much better with the Columbia students on the Upper West Side."

"Okay, okay, you got me.” He turned over to look at her as she gazed back out at them. “You want to be them.” 

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t  _ not  _ say that. No more dreams of Harvard?”

“I might not get in, I need backups. And they seem happy.” She nodded in the direction of the group, taking pictures of themselves dressed up in cap and gowns. “That could be me next year.”

“Are you sure you want to be with the NYU students? How are they any different than those kids at your fancy school?”

“The students at Chilton look  _ down  _ on NYU students. Not that I agree - it is a good school.” 

“Are you sure your New England sensibilities can handle it?”

Her jaw dropped at him with a fake gasp. “Hey, you did it.”

“Hey, I grew up here.”

They were having so much fun, and the banter so familiar that the next words slipped out of her. “Why did you come to Stars Hollow anyway?”

She watched him stiffen at the question. “Mom sent me.”

_ He didn’t back down from it completely.  _ “Yeah, I know that’s the story,” she pushed a little further. “But...you know. Why actually? What’s up with your mom?”

“Not all of us are attached at the hip.” He pulled out a box of cigarettes from his pocket, and a lighter from the other. “Cops found me and she went ballistic.”   
“Oh.” Rory looked away. It felt inappropriate to ask, but this newfound information seemed like a peace offering from Jess: a rare hand he was reaching out to her, inviting her in. “What did you - ” she started. 

“I didn’t  _ do _ anything.” He played with his lighter for a moment before sticking the cigarette into the flame. 

“Okay.”  _ Shoot _ , she thought.  _ I’ve lost my chance. _

They sat in silence for a moment, looking back over at the group. The couple who had been intimate earlier had found their way back into the group, taking pictures alongside them. There were backpacks and bookbags strewn across the ground, and plenty of food and drink spread out for them. It practically looked like a college admissions ad of celebration and . It was cute to watch all of them try on their caps and gowns, toss them between each other. She could see herself doing that in a year. As she pored over the girl, the boy, and the gang at large, she saw herself trying to put herself in the situation.  _ Which one would I be? Would I be a part of this? Do I fit in? _

The words came to Rory first, trying to bring back the ease they had had only moments earlier. “I could live here, I think. Find my way through all the record stores and used book stores. And certainly eat my way through all the pizza.”

His crooked smile perked up, though he didn’t say anything.

She continued on. “I mean, surely I could see more of the city than this. And I could go to the New York Public Library, or the Morgan Library or - oh, maybe the Poets House? You could take me there?”

“There’s a whole lot more to see around here than libraries.”

“Oh yeah?” she chuckled. “What else should I see?” 

He rested his hand on his knee, and Rory watched him rub the cigarette carefully between his fingers. He was focused now on the students, as if looking for someone in the crowd. She couldn’t quite tell which one of the group had his attention, or if he was like her and just looking for himself. 

“I was sleeping outside,” he said, “trying to figure out what to do.” He was quiet, almost as she wasn’t there. “I couldn’t stay in that apartment anymore. But they picked me up and they brought me back to her and she freaked. The next day I was on the bus to Stars Hollow.” 

“That’s it?” Rory said just as quietly. 

“I mean, I left because she saw me and Rodney, her last boyfriend, sitting around the table with a couple of six-packs and she snapped out of it real fast. Picked his side,” he snorted. “Of course. Not even with the guy six months later but still picked him over her son.” 

“So were you - were you drinking them? The six-packs?”

“I don’t drink,” he said defiantly. Jess often took pride in his statements, but this was a particularly powerful one. “She’s always been like this. The last decent boyfriend was a couple years ago, the only one who really stuck it out. Not that he was my father - that guy’s been gone for even longer. But he was close to it. And they all leave.” 

It was like he was revealing too much at once - she hadn’t heard talk about his mother or much of his past outside of the antics he would get up to in the city. She found this newfound curiosity, or perhaps courage, in getting to ask him these questions. Now that his defenses were falling, she wondered just how long she would have this chance. 

“And is she okay now?” her voice warbled. “I mean, now that you’re back here?”

He stayed quiet for a minute, taking a long drag off his cigarette. She watched him for a few seconds, waiting for some kind of response, any twitch or tremor that would give her away. Instead, he just kept staring off at the college kids at the fountain. The group was starting to pack up now, putting their caps and gowns back into plastic bags and pulling through their bookbags.  _ That is going to be me, _ she thought.  _ And maybe not as a student, but I’ll be back here. _ And then she thought of the here and now, how she could almost pack up everything and leave and let the conversation die out here. 

And finally, the words came to her. “Because, you could come back to Stars Hollow, I mean - ”

“Luke said what he said. Don’t you pity me.” He dropped the cigarette to the ground and stomped it with his feet. Rory watched it flatten, the blackened end puffing out just slightly. 

“I know what you mean, you know. About the abandonment part?”

“I told you not to pity to me - ”

“I’m not pitying you, Jess. I’m just - I don’t know, looking out for you.” She placed her hand on the bench beside his. She didn’t get any closer, or try anything. She didn’t really know how to comfort him all that much, but she knew she was supposed to at this moment. That maybe this wasn’t what she was looking for out of the day, but it was an answer just the same. 

The students were finally leaving. Most of the group was going back the way they came, but the girl Rory had looked at earlier went the opposite way. She waved slightly before leaving the group, blazing her own trail into Lower Manhattan. 

Rory looked back over at Jess. She felt worlds away from Stars Hollow, from Mom and Dean and where she was supposed to be. Right here, it was just her and Jess in New York, and this was all that she wanted. 

She swallowed. “Thank you. For telling me.”

His hand brushed hers ever so slightly. For the first time since Jess had disappeared from Stars Hollow, Rory felt a breath of fresh air she hadn’t known she’d been missing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter totally changed in its development (it was initially very Rory-centric one-shot about this trip, and focused on her thinking about her future.) I kept the central idea - the students in the park - but took away more of what they were thinking. I hope it makes sense?


	4. i want to flaunt it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks into Rory and Jess's relationship, they have a study session up in Luke's apartment. Takes place around the events of S3E9: Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apparently only finish writing chapters well past my bedtime...oh well! I had a lot of fun with this chapter once it got going, but kept it short since the next chapter will be a lot longer. Apologies if it needs a little bit more copyediting.

They sat on Jess’s deflating air mattress together, doing schoolwork in the last few days before Thanksgiving break.  _ Well, mostly doing work. _ Rory and Jess sat side by side, the former attempting to do her calculus assignment while the latter flipped through a collection of Hemingway. And every once in a while, one of them would briefly touch the other - a brush of the hand here, a nudge there. 

Under most circumstances, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But she had insisted that  _ first  _ she had to finish this take-home quiz before they got up to anything fun. Still, it was tempting, being this close together, being alone together. She looked over at his face, buried deep into the book, how he passively mouthed the words he was reading on the page and stuck out his tongue when focusing on a paragraph. She liked being able to see these little pieces of him when it was just the two of us. She liked how they could do this now - sit together, brush hands, give into each other.  _ I’m dating Jess now _ , she thought.  _ Or rather, I’m not dating Dean.  _ The feelings of the past few months - the letters she had tried to write while in Washington, the tripping over of words in conversations with her mother or Dean, and the longing glances they had shot one another since the kiss at Sookie’s weddings - had finally reached what to her felt like a solid foundation.  __

She was still trying to figure out how this worked, her and Jess dating. With Dean, it had been a lot of “figuring out as you go” - but it was also easy. They could sit on the couch and do work beside one another, banter as they helped each other study. They hadn’t ever been just friends, but had grown into the relationship together. And it had worked, rather seamlessly. 

With Jess, she was still trying to figure out the delicate balance between  _ friend  _ and  _ boyfriend _ , neither of which seemed to fit their past or present situation. Even after dating for two weeks, she still felt like she was stumbling into making their interactions natural. Kissing and everything past that made sense - other than their passionate discussions about books, it felt like the only thing that made sense. But the other boyfriend things that she’d picked up over the past two years - the going-on-dates, the personal conversations, the bonding nights with her mother, the “how-was-your-days” - clearly didn’t come naturally to Jess. Nor did they seem to come natural to her in the way they had with Dean. When she and Jess had been just friends (albeit flirtatious ones), he had confided in her as the details of his personal life trickled out. Now, he seemed tighter than ever. 

She leaned over, resting her chin on his shoulder. "Are you even supposed to be reading that?" she said, trying to peek into the short story. 

"We're reading  _ The Old Man and the Sea  _ in class. This counts," he scoffed. "Stay in your own lane, Gilmore. Aren’t I waiting for you to finish your homework?"

She pulled away to make a face, turning back to calculus to scribble down the next equation. 

“I’m almost done, I swear. No distractions.”

“No distractions over here,” he said, focused hard on his book as his left hand squeezed the top of her thigh. 

She swatted him away with her calculus notebook, biting her lip. She liked this teasing routine, but she needed to drag it out just a bit more before they could really enjoy themselves. 

“So, tell me about your day,” she said, playfully shoving her shoulder into him. 

“They insist on walking us through the entire Thanksgiving story,” he mumbled, “ignoring any of the outside commentary on the actual events of 1621.”

“Oh, yeah. Love how they have to fit the Stars Hollow angle in there.” He grunted in response, clearly much more interested in her finishing her calculus assignment over anything else. Still, she pressed on, determined to have a real conversation for once. “Well, my day hasn’t been that much more interesting. Most of my classmates have already taken off for the break, but we had rousing reading of act three, scene three of  _ Hamlet  _ from Connor Cuomo.”

“Oh yeah?” Jess wasn’t looking away from the short story. 

“He asked me to write his scene analysis after.” Connor actually had, after noticing she had scored another A on her analysis the previous week. She was surprised he’d even noticed her or the grade, considering how much time he spent sleeping in class. 

This caught Jess’s attention, raising his eyebrows. “Did you do it?”

“What kind of person do you take me for? Plus, he can pay someone else to do it, and it’d be far less noticeable.”

“Ugh, those snobs. I hated dealing with them.” 

“When would someone ever ask you to write a paper for them? I’ve pulled teeth trying to get you to do that work for class. ” 

“I had my days. Your suburban trust-fund boys wouldn't stand a chance against those phony prep school kids on the Upper East Side.”

"Okay, Holden. Where would you even meet Upper East Siders on the Lower East Side?"

"We meet in Washington Square Park. Or at lectures at Columbia.”

She played along. "Fine, I believe you. Doesn’t make you any better than them if you're doing the work for them.” 

“I’m better than any of them. I can actually have a conversation, which is more than can be said about most. C’mon, you go to school with them. You know how it is.”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re not all bad. Some of them, sure.”

“Like who?”

She stopped for a moment to think of even one. “Brad’s not bad. He’s actually kind of endearing.”

“Isn’t he the one in  _ Into the Woods  _ right now?”

“Okay, fine. A lot of them aren’t great.”

“Tell me another one.” It was a little weird how into it he got, how the mocking of her classmates seemed to engage him.

“Byron Baxter - “

“What is this, a nineteenth-century House of Lords?” 

“ - he offered to pay the whole class’s way to Boston to see the Boston Pops during our Classical period study in music theory.” 

“Like it’s that easy. They think they can get away with anything.”

"Ugh! And there was Tristan - " she stopped herself. She'd never actually told anyone about kissing Tristan, not Lane or her mother, and it felt weird for her to say something to Jess. He knew about Dean, sure, by navigating other - relationships? crushes? things? - was murkier.

"Is there more there?"

"He showed up with tickets to PJ Harvey and insisted I would go with him on a date. Like he could just buy me or something.” She reached back over into Jess’s lap for her textbook. “And I seem to remember him taking my books, too - that didn't end well for him."

It felt a little empowering to speak ill of her classmates, even though she felt a little bad saying it about Paris. It wasn't that Chilton wasn't a good place - she did love her teachers, and she'd felt so empowered with all the opportunities afforded to her. But the social scene did feel a little strange. She'd never really preoccupied herself with making friends, but she still felt a bit out of place at Chilton. They were like the Stars Hollow High kids - everywhere had a Madeline and Louise - but quite literally on Adderall. And the money was much more obvious. It was kind of fun to make fun of them in a way that didn’t feel too connected to anything else - to just get it all out in the open. 

“How not well?” said Jess, clearly waiting to hear the rest of what she had to offer. 

Rory turned back to the notebook, finishing out the last problem as Jess finished his rant about prep schools. Once she’d reviewed her notes, she closed her calculus book with a satisfying  _ thunk,  _ placing her notebook on top of it on the ground next to them. 

“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? And I’m done with my quiz,” she said proudly, shaking with anticipation of what would come next. 

Jess sprung into action climbing on top of her and pulling off her Chilton blazer in the process. She laughed as he tossed behind her with a flourish. “Finally,” he said, his crooked smile revealing the tiniest dimple in his cheek. He dove to her nuzzle her neck, and she reached up to his belt loops to pull him closer. As she touched her cool hands on the small of his back, he shuddered slightly before laughing. 

“God, we really have to warm you up.”

She laughed, and he laughed it felt  _ right.  _ Everything in their afternoon and the awkwardness they’d been trying to work through over the past two weeks - when they were finally alone and in moments like this, it all seemed to click. And she loved getting to see this part of him - where he wasn’t so cool and unfeeling, but deeply invested in her and this. And goodness, was he good at this. She loved how giddy they both were in this moment, and she could feel her face beaming as she could finally lose herself in the moment with Jess. She was done with school for the break, she had four Thanksgivings to look forward to, she’d finally gotten something out of Jess for the day, and now they were here and she felt so happy and free of any constraints and -

"You're smiling so hard right now," he said, stopping their kiss.

"I'm enjoying this."

"This is very serious stuff."

"Sure," she nodded, trying to hold back her joy. "Very serious."

"You don't look like you're taking this seriously."

She embraced her joy in all its glory before letting the smile break, going back in for another kiss. After a few moments of each other, he pulled away again.

"It's okay to smile a little bit, you know."

She kissed his cheek. “Okay.”

* * *

They heard Luke's footsteps coming up the stairs to the apartment, quickly trying to untangle themselves. 

"Rory!" said Luke, bopping his way into the apartment. "I didn't realize you were here." His jitteriness and feigned surprise made it painfully obvious that he had, in fact, known she was here. He must’ve gotten caught up with something downstairs, or he would’ve been up much sooner. "Does your mom know you're here?"

"She was going over some new things with Tobin at the inn. You're right though, I should probably get home before Mom does."

"Oh, no, well, don't leave on my account."

"It's okay, Luke - "

"Well, at least let me drive you - "

"I can drive her," Jess interrupted. 

“I can walk. It’s still pretty light out.”

“I’ll drive you,” Jess said, reaching for her hand. She turned to face him as he was leaning over to kiss her. 

Rory paused for a moment in embarrassment. She wasn't much for PDA in most cases, and it felt awkward to kiss in front of Luke. The man was practically a surrogate father to her - he'd seen her at a lot of phases in life - but kissing, especially kissing his nephew, wasn't exactly one of them. And she’d just gotten over being comfortable with everyone knowing she was dating Jess - 

But Jess didn't seem phased by it - and at that moment, it did still feel like they were the only two in the world. She leaned in for a kiss - quick, chaste, gentle - and pulled back, like they'd done something scandalous and reckless. But it also felt like a new step for her. It didn't matter who knew it, but Jess - for all his faults - was hers. 


	5. i now have you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prior to Episode S3E10: That’ll Do, Pig

Rory shivered, pulling her scarf a little tighter around her neck and clutching the warm coffee in her hand. It was a particularly cold December in Stars Hollow, and one of the few days as a New Englander where she felt the scarf was actually necessary instead of just decoration. 

From her perspective, sitting in the gazebo, usually with her mother she could take in all the sights of the tiny town they called home. To her right was where she just came, a busy Luke’s and an even busier Doose’s Market, filled with those trying to get their Christmas orders together. To her left, a bit further down, was Kim’s Antiques, where she planned to head after this endeavor, depending on how the next few minutes went. Behind her sat the Churchogogue, its bells ringing to announce that it was noon. And in front of her was Stars Hollow High, her once-alma mater and her current focus of attention. She was already on break, but Stars Hollow High still had this half-day weirdness on the Monday before they reached winter vacation. And any moment now, she could have the whole afternoon with Jess. 

“You waiting for Lane, too?” said a voice from behind her, and she turned to see Dave Rygalski. Like her, he was holding a little gift bag in his hand. 

“Jess, actually. But they should be out any minute.”

“Oh, good. I just parked my car, didn’t think I was going to make it in time to catch her before rehearsal. They were saying something about a nor'easter this weekend…” Rory was half-listening to Dave’s nervous monologue -  _ man, that boy is almost as bad as Picard’s Data.  _ In truth, she was too nervous about her gift for Jess to engage in real conversation. 

It was only December 23rd, but between the Hartford Gilmore Christmas, the terse visit to Sherry and Christopher’s, and the Gilmore girls’ traditions that would take up the next few days, Rory preferred she and Jess exchange gifts prior to the holiday. She’d asked him yesterday if it was okay, though he probably agreed just to shut her up. 

Gift-giving, in the Gilmore tradition, was extremely important, and she had put an overwhelming amount of pressure on herself to choose an absolutely perfect Christmas gift for Jess. Adding more fuel to the fire, she knew it was probably the only gift he would get this year. Luke was buying him some new clothes, a line of credit at Stars Hollow Books, and bus tickets to New York if he ever wanted to use them. His mother hadn’t sent him anything last year, and Rory doubted she would send something this year. 

A Christmas gift, according to everything she had learned from Lorelai, had to be personal, meaningful, and special. It had to capture what you knew about the person, and express through your own love language what that meant. In the case of Jess, that made things quite difficult. Despite knowing him for over a year, she was still learning to read him and understand what he would actually appreciate. An easy gift would be books - that was how they spoke to each other. And in that case, they’d been exchanging gifts for awhile, both pre- and post-defining their relationship. Just since Thanksgiving, they’d already exchanged Vonnegut, Stoker, and Stephen King. But she wanted the Christmas gift to be  _ different _ from their normal exchanges. 

She had brought it up with Paris ( _ I’m Jewish, Rory, we don’t do that _ ) and with Lane ( _ You’re his girlfriend, Rory, he’ll like anything as long as it’s coming from you _ ) and she’d brought it up with her mom ( _ give him the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future and scare the Scrooge out of him before it’s too late _ ). She’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, wanting it to be perfect, wanting it to be the thing that would get him to open up just a little bit. And when it came to her, she knew instantly that it was the right thing to give. She’d wrapped it in the comics pages of  _ The Hartford Courant  _ and taken a gift bag from her mother’s hoard, which now sat on the steps next to her. 

In addition to the stress of picking a gift for Jess, she was curious as to what he would get her. She had tried to ask Luke, or at least give him some sort of idea in case Jess asked. Her mom had shrugged and told her not to expect much, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he would -  _ I don’t know, try?  _ There hadn’t really been opportunities yet to be an amazing, outstanding boyfriend.  _ But Christmas would opportunity enough, right?  _ It wasn’t that she wanted to force his hand or imagine him as something he wasn’t. But she did want to know that there was more to this for Jess, that being his girlfriend meant something.  _ Surely Dave has picked out something spectacular for Lane.  _

She was exchanging pleasantries with Dave for a few moments, about the coming nor’easter and the plans for band rehearsal when the loud buzz of the school bell pierced through the town square. They both turned, eager to see their partners walk out the building, and Rory watched as her former classmates strolled out of the building. There was Jason Fitzgerald, who had sat in front of her in freshman homeroom; IIzzie and Meredith, two of Rory’s former lab partners; and even Dean and Lindsay Lister, who seemed to be standing around with a group of hockey team members. 

Lane came out next, sprinting towards the gazebo. In only a few moments, she was out of breath in front of them 

“Hi, guys! My two favorite people!” Lane exclaimed. “Are you waiting for Jess, Rory?” 

Rory nodded. “Yeah, we’re exchanging gifts today before the whole holiday mess sets in.” 

“Us, too! Also trying to sneak in one last band rehearsal before I’m stuck in Seventh-Day Adventist hell for the entire week talking about how Christmas is a day of consumption and materialism.” 

Dave and Lane were talking now, and Rory was somewhat paying attention as she tried to keep her eye on the school. The stream of students quickly slowed to a trickle as the last few stragglers made their way out of the building. Rory saw Jess coming out in his leather jacket, look directly at her and the three of them in the gazebo, and then book it into Luke’s. She hoped that was a good thing, and she was starting to feel impatient. 

“But first, we have gifts,” piped up Dave, holding up his little gift bag. 

“Yes! Yours is hiding at Sophie’s. Let’s sneak over there before Mama Kim sees us?” She grabbed Dave’s free arm. “Bye, Rory!” 

The couple rushed off in the direction of Sophie’s music store. “Bye, Dave! Bye, Lane! See you later,” she called out as they walked off. It was good to see Lane so happy, and she was looking forward to their meetup later this week to discuss Dave’s gift-giving skills. But now, Rory kept looking over at the diner, waiting for her boyfriend to come running out. She wondered if she would have just enough time to sneak in a few pages of the Gorbachev biography when the door opened at Luke’s.

Jess was walking towards her at a calm, collected pace, and she lifted her spare hand to give a slight wave. Her whole body was vibrating with excitement at seeing him, as if a large exclamation point was appearing above her head. They hadn’t been together officially that long -  _ only six weeks, officially, but who’s counting? _ \- and the joy of seeing him after school, on weekends, in their spare meetings hadn’t worn off.

“Hey,” he said as he was in spitting distance, and that was all it took for her to jump up and kiss him. After a long kiss, he pulled back and chuckled. “Someone’s excited today.” 

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to see you? It’s only been me and the books all morning.”

“What are you reading?” he nodded at her bag. 

“I just finished my reread of  _ Little Women.  _ Holiday season and all, need to stick to the classics. And I’m working through this Gorbachev biography on the side.” She shivered with anticipation, the Lorelai in her ready for surprises. “Are you ready for your gift now?” 

“Isn’t it sacreligious to give gifts before Christmas?” 

“I believe we have a papal dispensation for this one, straight from John Paul the Second himself.” 

“Oh well, if the Pope says it, I guess we can start the festivities.”

She giggled, handing him the holiday bag and sitting back down to watch him open it. 

He started rifling through the bag, pulling out the tissue paper. “There’s a lot in here,” he said, frowning.

“Oh, is there? I don’t think so.” 

He looked up from the bag. “You’re a bad liar, Rory.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted it to be special. They’re mostly all used, but I don’t know if that counts so much.” 

He pulled out the two book-sized packages, unwrapping the used copies of  _ Fight Club  _ and  _ Invisible Monsters _ . “Palahniuk, some light and joyous reading for the holidays,” he said.

Rory waved her head. “I know you’ve read them, I just figured we could add them to our exchange. But that’s not the best part, keep digging.” 

He pulled out the thinner gifts, all roughly the same size. “Is there a specific order, or…?”

“You can just open them. Once you open one, you’ll know what they are.”

He raised an eyebrow, tearing apart the wrapping paper. You could tell a lot about a person from the way they opened their gifts, and Rory noticed how Jess was methodical with his tears. He dug in at either end, and then ripped down the center. 

Once he could see what it was, his eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning. He didn’t look at her, he just kept staring at the gift.

“You didn’t.”

“You want to open the rest of them?” 

He quickly tore through the rest of the gifts, each one a wrapped DVD case of a movie from the  _ Rocky  _ film  series. His eyes were excited, but he wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t saying anything, and that made Rory nervous. 

“For our next movie night!” she said, trying to gauge his reaction. “You talked about how much you loved them growing up. I thought you should have a way to see them that wasn’t trying to catch on cable. That and there’s  _ Goodfellas  _ in the bag, too - you told me how much you loved trying to do a Ray Liotta impression.” 

He was staring at the DVDs, passing them through his hands as if trying to discern whether they were actually there in his hands. 

“Do you like it?” she pushed.    
He looked back up at her, a sort of dazed and confused look on his face, before breaking into his crooked smile. He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I do. Thank you. Now it’s your turn.” 

He pulled something out of his leather jacket. It was small - not quite book-sized, which immediately crossed off a majority of her guesses. It was rolled up, which asked more questions than answers, and a necklace chain wrapped around it.

“A necklace,” she said, rather deadpanned, unwrapping the chain to try and see the pendant. The pendant - a small locket version of  _ Charlotte’s Web,  _ one of her childhood favorite’s - surprised her.  _ Who knew Jess would think that sentimentally? _

“Figured you need some new jewelry.” He seemed simultaneously proud and nonchalant, waiting on her positive reaction before he gave more details to his gift.

“Will you put it on me?” she said, and he obliged. Once it was around her neck, she held it between her fingers, smiling silently. 

“There’s more inside the wrapping paper,” he nudged.

“Right.” She turned back to the rolled gift, taking a deep breath in preparation. She carefully tore it apart at the tape, revealing a rolled-up t-shirt. As she unrolled it, she gasped: a vintage Patti Smith shirt from her early poetry days. 

“Oh my God, Jess. Where did you even - ”

“I have my ways. Santa Claus and I go way back.”

“My mom is going to be so jealous,” she said holding up the shirt in all its glory. It was in mint condition, and the perfect size for someone like Rory. “Seriously, where did you get this? I’ve never seen one outside of pictures.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he said, putting his arm around her. She clutched the shirt to her chest and leaned into him. 

“And this one,” he said, pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handing it to her, “is for you to actually open on Christmas. No cheating, either - I’ll know.” 

Her eyes widened, curious. “How will you know?” she teased. 

“I’m pretty sure I can get Santa to keep an eye on you.” 

“Even if I’m on the naughty list?” she laughed. 

“Rory Gilmore, on the naughty list? Where has this girl been?” he said, and she squeezed him. She grinned, and the snowflakes starting to fall around the gazebo made it finally feel like it was Christmas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm trying to be consistent and get these up on Friday/Saturdays from now on - we're about halfway through what I had sketched out for this work, though I might need another scene to flesh out the story. I took some liberties with how canon-compliant this scene is, more so with Jess's gift. (While I think it's very cool and the right kind of gift, I'm not sure gift-giving would be Jess's forte at this point in the series.)


	6. i don't know anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rory and Jess read Leaves of Grass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere around Episode S3E12: Lorelai Out Of Water.

It was Thursday, and she hadn’t heard from Jess since Sunday night. Their last meeting had been rather terse - not for any particular reason, but it had been a school night and Jess had worked late at Luke’s. Still, she and Mom had been through the diner at least once a day all week. And each time, Jess’s face had brightened upon seeing her only to ignore her for the remainder of the time.

Something seemed to have happened to him post-Christmas, something she couldn’t quite place. It was like whatever they had been building up to in a relationship had suddenly disappeared. They still met, and they were still dating, and sometimes it really seemed like Jess was trying to make it work. But to Rory, he seemed lost and distant. He seemed more like the Jess everyone made him out to be, instead of the Jess she had been seeing. Here, in the margins of these books, she could see the parts of him she recognized. 

She looked up at the clock. If Jess were to have caught her after school, he would’ve done it at the bus stop.  _ If he wanted to catch me after work, he would have called by now. _ It wasn’t too late for them to meet tonight - she and Mom were planning a late dinner anyway - but it was later than she’d like. And with Friday Night Dinner tomorrow, it would be at least another 36 hours before they would see each other again. 

_ Still,  _ she thought,  _ if I’m not going to see him, I might as well read from him.  _ Thankfully, their Sunday tryst they communicated through the marginal notes in the books they shared. They were reading through  _ Leaves of Grass  _ this week, after she insisted he improve his poetry game. She didn’t tell him that she also had a paper, but she was curious what he thought of Whitman. For all his love of the Beat poets, she was surprised he didn’t love Whitman more - their vulgarity, sensuality, and free verse seemed like a perfect match.  _ I should remember that _ , she thought. She pulled out her agenda and drafted the sentence beside the day’s notes. 

Sometimes, it felt like the only real moments of Jess that she could get at were in books. Even though he’d already written something akin to feelings in the letter he’d given her for Christmas, they didn’t  _ say _ their feelings out loud. They didn’t say much in the way of anything out loud - and lately, it was hard to say much of anything. When they were together, they would talk about books, or their witty banter would envy  _ Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! _ , all interspersed with various necking of the under-the-shirt, over-the-bra variety.  _ But that’s not a relationship _ , she thought. And while it made it very happy in their moments together, it left her wanting in their moments between. 

She was flipping through  _ Leaves of Grass _ , jumping to her favorite poems. On “I Sing The Body Electric”, he had written a lengthy diatribe of slavery beside the the eighth stanza, rambling about body-centrism and valuation of enslaved bodies. He’d drafted a brief comment about  _ Dead Poets Society  _ by “O Captain, My Captain,” focusing more on Robin Williams than anything else. Based on his notes, Jess had been particularly drawn to the “Sea-Drift” portion of the text, though she wondered why Jess would feel so intimately connected to the seashore. In a different color pen, she would leave notes beside his own - some responses, some of her own thoughts, some flirting.  _ Whitman makes it so easy to come across as sensual.  _

She flipped to the folded page at “A Noiseless Patient Spider.” Jess had drawn a tiny spider at the top of the line as if on a ledge, weaving its tiny web falling below the later lines. He’d clearly spent a lot of time on this page, underlines and circles abound, but no notes other than the one at the top - “TO REMEMBER.” It seemed odd that he would ignore this particular page for commentary, and yet call it out directly in this note. 

She mouthed the words as she read its opening lines: 

> _ A noiseless patient spider,  _
> 
> _ I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, _

A car honk blared through the room, interrupting her reading. Rory jumped to her feet, the book falling to the floor and bookmarks spilling out. She looked out the window to see the headlights of Jess’s car waiting out by the road. 

“Is that Jess outside?” Lorelai called out, buttoning her blazer with one hand and brushing her hair with the other as she walked back into the living room. 

“Yeah,” Rory said, pulling together her things and stuffing the bookmarks back inside. 

“He’s not even going to walk to the front door?”   
“It’s Jess, he’s not coming to the door.”

Lorelai peered out the window. “He’s not going to even come in the driveway?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to block you in.” 

“Is your boyfriend afraid of me?”   
“He’s not afraid of you.”

“Were you expecting him?”

Rory averted her eyes from Lorelai, pulling on a jacket. “Yeah, why?”

“Because you look pretty settled in here on the couch. Weren’t you two a little testy last night at Luke’s?” 

“He’s here now.” Rory didn’t mean to sound insistent, but she could feel herself getting short with her mother. 

Lorelai picked up on Rory’s curt reply, returning it with a huff. “You deserve better, kid.” She handed Rory a set of keys. “Gotta get back to the inn for these Norwegian clients. Don’t be home too late.” 

Rory gave a half-hearted smile before booking it out the door. 

The walk from her front door to the road seemed like miles. Jess didn’t look up or open the door for her, and she was annoyed as she had to knock for him to even notice.    
“What book was your nose caught in this time?” he said as she settled into the car.

“Whitman, of course.”

“Still on that? Are my notes tripping you up?”    
“I found your review of the 1989 Robin Williams classic to be thrilling.”

He chuckled. “Where do you want to go?” She found it odd that he could fall back into this easiness, as if they had seen each other minutes ago instead of days.  _ Maybe it’s just me.  _

“We could drive to Woodbury.” He made a face, so she tried again. “Or we could go into town?” He shook his head, turning on the road. “You could come up with a place for a change.”

“Anywhere less public we can go?”

“There aren’t a lot of options in Stars Hollow.” 

“So let’s go outside of Stars Hollow.” 

“I already suggested Woodbury.” 

“I’ve met Hank from Woodbury, he’s just Taylor with a bowling alley.”

“Ah, but he does have a bowling alley. So you want to go bowling?”   
“Let’s finish Whitman,” he said as the car crossed the Stars Hollow town line.

“Let’s go to Woodbridge.” Rory pointed east. 

* * *

Woodbridge was slightly larger than Stars Hollow in size and population, with slightly less quirk. The one thing Rory would concede its superiority was its playground, which was  _ much  _ nicer than that at Stars Hollow Elementary. It had swingsets and teeter-totters, monkey bars and metal slides, a very elaborate geodesic dome that the town boasted was designed by Buckminster Fuller himself. When they were younger, Rory and Lane would beg Lorelai to drive to the kid paradise.

Rory hadn’t been back to the playground in years, though pulling into the parking lot gave her the same rush of excitement. It was unusually warm for a late New England winter, and the playground was surprisingly well-lit. Rory guided Jess over to the wooden swings - her on one, him on the other. 

As they read poems to each other, Rory found herself drawing circles in the sand with her feet. She liked listening to his voice as he read aloud, how he stepped out of its gruff demeanor and instead into a calmer, cooler tone. He read to her without restriction of himself, passionate and engaged. He was quiet, still, but the intensity of his focus on each word gave the performance an awesome power. 

And yet, she still found her mind wandering, thinking of what a future with Jess would look like.  _ Not a real future, mind you _ , stopping herself from getting caught up in an imaginary nostalgia.  _ But next year.  _ When she would be at Harvard -  _ can’t jinx that  _ \- and they could do this in places that weren’t playgrounds but elaborately constructed libraries or campus greens; her, the always-determined journalism student, and him -  _ well, I haven’t actually thought where Jess might be.  _ In fairness, they hadn’t talked about much past May and senior events. Trying to broach the subject of Stars Hollow prom seemed daunting enough for their fragile relationship. And yet, she already found herself wondering what was coming next for him. She knew the terms of Luke’s agreement -  _ stay in school  _ \- but with the end of school already on the horizon, what was coming next?

  
Part of her - an ill-advised rabbit hole - wanted to imagine him there at Harvard next to her.  _ Not that it could happen, of course, deadlines and grades being unavoidable hurdles.  _ And not that Jess needed to be at Harvard, per se, but there weren’t many plans to his life and logic beyond what came each day. At Chilton, colleges and prep schools were on everyone’s mind. Even Lane was thinking about it, though Mrs. Kim was severely limiting her options. But Jess -  _ what was coming next for Jess?  _

“You’re staring, Gilmore,” Jess interrupted her thoughts, pausing between stanzas. 

“Are you applying to colleges?” He ignored her question, flipping through to the next page. “I”m just asking. It can be a no.”

He stopped reading the stanza. “I’m not going to college, Rory.” His straightforwardness caught her off-guard. It wasn’t necessarily that not going to college was an option for him that surprised her, but that he had already ruled it out.    
“It’s a lot better than high school,” she tried. 

“Not all of us go to Harvard! Some of us work.”

“And you plan on continuing that? At Luke’s?”

“I got a job,” he sighed. “At Walmart.”

“Oh!”  _ That’s new information.  _ “And you’re happy about that?”    
“At least until I can save up enough money for the next thing.”

“And what’s the next thing?”

“I don’t know, Rory! I don’t have my life planned out for the next ten years!”    
“Okay.” She shrunk back down into the wooden seat of the swing. 

They stayed silent for a moment, Jess finding himself unable to return to the poem at hand. “It’s really bugging you, that I don’t have an answer to do this.”

“Why do you always assume you know what I’m thinking?” 

“Because I know what you’re thinking.”

“I just think it would be really good for you.” She pulled back  _ Leaves of Grass  _ from him, waving it in the air. “I mean, you’ve practically written a dissertation in here.” 

He shrugged, taking it back from her and beginning to read again. She hated how he would back down from a fight with her. It wasn’t that he couldn’t win - he’d certainly bested her in academic debates - but when it came to talking about  _ them,  _ about something  _ real _ , he could always be so closed up. 

“I’m worried about college,” she piped up, trying to redirect the conversation. “What if I don’t get into Harvard?”   
“Then you’ll get in somewhere else,” he sighed. “That’s not really bothering you and we both know it..”

“How do you know what’s bothering me and what isn’t?”

“Stop trying to make this about you, Rory.” He sounded bored. 

“It’s not about me, Jess, it’s about - ”

“It’s about you.” He pushed off the ground roughly and began swinging, holding the book open in one hand as he held on tightly to the chain with the other. 

“What about this job at Walmart? Is it a good thing?”   
“Don’t make this into an interrogation!”

“I’m not! I want to be here for you. I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy!” he said, swinging by her, the anger of his words making it clear he felt otherwise. “

She watched him, unable to say anything else. She felt frustrated and scared and wanting to say so many things but so unsure of what to say that would make sense. And she hated feeling this way - stuck in wanting something more for Jess and him being unwilling to say anything else. 

He was quiet now, his swinging coming to a gentle stop. “Can we just read Whitman?” 

She leaned over to kiss him, and he accepted her peace offering. 

* * *

They were silent for most of the ride home, but Rory didn’t know how to get back to the ease of conversation they had before their fight. Jess’s silence implied he had sunk into one of his moods again. She wondered if they would talk tomorrow morning when she went to pick up coffee at the diner, or if she would have to. 

He pulled up in front of the house, pulling down his emergency brake in the same place he’d parked before. 

“You’re not going to walk me to the door?”   
“Your mom’s home.”

Rory frowned. “Her car’s not even here.”

“I can say goodbye from here just fine.” 

“But you could at least walk me to the door? Or maybe even come in?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He was gruff, refusing to even look as she exited the car. 

The words slipped out of her, untimely and unexpectedly. “You know, you could really grow up and get a spine, Jess.”

She got out of the car, slamming the car door behind her. She could already feel the tears welling up in her eyes. She reached into her bag for her keys, but her fingers only found the well-worn copy of _Leaves of Grass._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took me longer than i hoped, but the direction for this chapter was all over the place! (i hope it doesn't come across that way!) i'm also a little unsure of when canon-wise this would actually happen, but the next chapter is v e r y episode-specific so I know it has to happen before then. 
> 
> i also reference dead poets society here as well as in my other rory/jess fic - i expect these two fics exist in the same universe, if you're interested in reading more of my stuff. 
> 
> there are also a few outtakes from this chapter, but they didn't quite fit in editing nor in this story anymore - i might spin it off into its own one-shot. thoughts?


	7. i was that girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Distillers concert, Jess and Rory have a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode S3E15: Face-Off

She was still curious on how exactly Jess scored these tickets. He wasn’t willing to spend time with her and her friends, or her most of the time it felt - but when it was them, just the two of them, these things kinda felt right.  _ I should have let Mom know I’d be home late _ , she thought. 

“It’s supposed to be a good show,” he said, his hands roaming her side as they walked into the venue. 

“Jess, we’re in public,” she loudly whispered over the music, squirming.

“It’s a concert, no one’s paying attention to us anyway.”

“Well,  _ I  _ want to pay attention.” She swatted him away as they dipped further into the crowd. He kept his hands on her hips, just above her waistband - which felt safe enough, even if she still wasn’t particularly pleased with him. 

Given the unpredictability of the evening, Rory still wasn’t sure what to make of the circumstances. Of course, she wasn’t thrilled about having sat through a hockey game (even one where the team did somewhat well and there was a fight) and yet spent most of the time wondering where Jess was. But here and now, at the concert, she felt as though the evening had taken an entirely different turn. They’d arrived just in time to see the main event. 

She hadn’t been to many concerts in her career - she distinctly remembered a young Lorelai and an even younger Rory trying to sneak her in to see The Goo Goo Dolls, and a bouncer kicking them both out. There was the Pushmonkey show that had been a secret Lane birthday present, a sort of initiation ceremony once Lorelai learned of Lane’s rock obsession.  _ The music kid I wish I had,  _ Lorelai had lamented. There was the Bangles concert from sophomore year, though that didn’t go exactly as planned. But Mom mostly couldn’t afford the tickets, so unless it came from someone else or they were able to convince someone to let them in, they didn’t go. Besides, their money was usually better sent at Sophie’s for records, where they could take it home and dance in their living room. 

There was something about a concert venue that was distinctly unfamiliar and alien to Rory, who’d never been one for crowds outside of a Stars Hollow festival. The other venues she’d been to for previous concerts had looked much nicer and grander -  _ and cleaner _ , she thought. It was pretty sleazy inside, the aged walls and torn curtains tied to the sides of the stage. As she stepped onto the floor, the dried alcohol stuck to her shoes.  _ At least I hope that’s alcohol.  _ Part of her really wanted to be sitting -  _ who wants to be standing this long, anyway?  _ \- but it was also kinda fun to be in the thick of it, watch everybody in the crowd by seeing everyone standing around them. There were some college kids - UConn sweatshirts, Hartford Community College ones, a few from the Yale crowd if she squinted really hard. There were also a few people older than them - Mom’s age, or what she expected Lane to be in 20 years. The couples were easy to identify, making out in the back of the room. The drunks already losing it - one had nearly puked on her shoe while they were waiting for the band to start. 

She found herself woefully overdressed for a punk rock concert - in comparison, she looked -  _ well, like myself.  _ Jess didn’t seem to mind, or notice in fact. He didn’t look quite as punk as everyone else, though the leather jacket was pretty much automatic buy-in.  _ Did he actually gel his hair up for this?  _ Unlike most of the time in Stars Hollow, he seemed to fit in here among the other misfits and lost souls. 

Her people-watching was interrupted but the amps blaring for the act, and the crowd cheered as they sprung to action. Jess squeezed a little tighter, and she could feel the energy in the room get so excited. Everyone behind them started gathering closely, pushing past them. She looked back at Jess, alarmed. 

“Relax. It’s a mosh pit.” He took her hand and brought them just to be on the outside of everything. “You really are new at this.” 

Rory squeezed his hand as the band took the stage. 

* * *

_ Whey-ho, whey-ho / Whey-ho, whey-ho / Whey-ho, whey-ho / Whey-ho, whey-ho _

The roars and screams of the crowd kept Rory alert, her heart pumping loudly as the bass reverberated through her body. She kept trying to focus on  _ something  _ \- the voice of the lead singer echoing through the venue, the audience experiencing some unique form of exhilaration so alien and yet familiar, the way she felt in that moment. But in her drained emotional state and tiredness, all she could really focus on was Jess. 

She found it endearing to watch him in his element, nodding along and cheering with the rest of the crowd. He looked like a little kid, shouting back lyrics at the top of his lungs, fighting over everyone else to do the same. She wondered how many concerts he’d snuck into in New York, how many little dive bars and underground rock shows he’d made his way into, how many times he had found refuge in this kind of music if only because the band was louder than the thoughts around him.  _ Plenty _ , she thought.  _ Though the first here in Connecticut, with me. _

She liked The Distillers enough, but it was more exciting to see Jess so happy. Since their first  _ real  _ fight, as she kept telling herself in the days post-the fiasco that was Emily Gilmore, it was hard to get back to that part of him. He was being secretive about  _ something _ , and she in turn was secretive back. She wanted to spend time with him, but didn’t feel like she could ask. She wanted to ask how school and Walmart and life was going, and he would shrug and change the subject. It sometimes felt like everyone else’s relationships were progressing and thinking of what would come next - Dave and Lane starting to make plans for prom, even Dean had a new girlfriend - and she and Jess were, well, she and Jess. She lamented that who she had once found dark and mysterious and attractive, and who could understand the parts of her that her mother didn’t see, could often be so careless with her heart. She wanted to be mad and upset, stand her ground like everyone told her to. She wanted to tell him off when he showed up with these tickets, but just seeing him - him doing above the bare minimum - suddenly made it okay for her. 

And here in this moment - where no one else knew them, where there weren’t any other comparisons, where they could have firsts that she and Dean never did - she found the possibility of a future. 

Rory found herself so caught up in these thoughts, she failed to notice the lead singer coming into the crowd. The whole crowd was pushing her forward and accidentally on top of the young woman. Rory and the woman locked eyes as they tripped over each other’s shoes, mouthing a quick  _ sorry  _ to the singer before trying to move out of the way. Ever a professional, the singer just smiled and continued singing, and Jess yanked Rory away from the spotlight. 

“You actually touched Brody Dalle! Rory!” Jess was shouting into her ear, his voice barely registering over the energy of the room. As the singer moved around the crowd and away from them, the audience ebbing and flowing in its movement, Rory noticed she’d never felt so short or so small. 

* * *

They left the venue shortly after the encore, Jess still in a state of post-exhilaration from the concert. In their entire time knowing each other, she didn’t think she’d ever heard him talk this much about anything. On the ride back to Stars Hollow, they exhausted most of the conversation about the concert, debating whether “City of Angels” sounded better live versus the recording, if the new bassist would continue with the band, and whether The Distillers would reach a career high anywhere near Green Day. 

As they talked, she found herself cuddling into the passenger seat, holding his hand in her lap. She liked his car - his 1969 AMC Ambassador, its velour upholstery, the funky-looking interior that its previous owners had maintained, even the sticky ashtrays where Jess kept his lighter and it almost stuck to the half-melted gunk. She even liked the sound of its engine, its constant hum the background to a  _ Dukes of Hazzard  _ marathon.  _ I’d like to see Jess’s hood slide over this one,  _ she thought as the hum grew louder. 

But the thing that felt most comfortable about his car was that it was their space. They’d spent a lot of time at Luke’s, and occasionally at home (though Rory was careful not to bring him over when Lorelai was home.) As they were quickly learning as the weather was getting warmer, there were lots of places outdoors that they could be together. But everything and everywhere they went was so public - the car was the sole place that they could be themselves. Together.  _ Alone. _

They grew quieter as the exit signs got closer to home, and Rory wondered if that was Jess’s excitement calming down or the sudden realization by both of them that the night was going to end. Jess kept his eyes on the road ahead while she stayed looking at him, catching snippets of his face through the passing lights. While she wanted to speak, she instead squeezed his hand gently every few minutes as the silence grew louder between them. She was running through the familiarity of the next few moments in her head: Jess would pull up close to - but not into - the driveway of her home, they’d kiss as passionately as one could in the few minutes they had alone together, and then she’d walk back up to the porch alone. Lorelai would be there, waiting to share whatever antics had happened at the Gilmore residence that evening while awkwardly avoiding the topic of Jess. Although this time, Lorelai didn’t necessarily know about the whole Jess part.  _ The game _ , Rory reminded herself.  _ I have to remember the score of the game _ . 

It wasn’t that she had to hide this from her mother. Rory could just as easily be honest about how the evening went - that Jess had showed up after all, that they’d gone to a concert together, and that he could be the boyfriend she wanted. But such a thing would not be the full truth, and getting to the full truth with Lorelai Gilmore was not a thing she wanted to address this late at night. 

It was weird not to have her mother on her side about this. With Dean, she had come around rather quickly. But Dean understood their little idiosyncrasies and Gilmore quirks, embracing them to the fullest extent. Dean saw Lorelai and her as a package deal.  _ Not that I should be comparing them again.  _

And it wasn’t that Rory expected Jess to be that way. Sometimes, she preferred it, seeing herself outside of her mother. The thoughts they shared, the books they read, the debates they argued - all of them felt more meaningful with Jess. His unpredictability was a challenge. But his willingness to embrace her and her alone, when he actually did, was his best feature. 

“What are you thinking about?” he said, letting the words hang in the air between them. He was rarely so direct with her. He looked away from the road for a moment, just to have his eyes light up as he looked over at her. His mouth was turned up a bit, like he internally had a plan for her response. 

“Nothing.” As much as she wanted to be honest with him about how she felt, it felt hard. There were stakes to telling someone how you felt no matter what the relationship was, and somehow the stakes got higher as they were dating longer. And she was always trying to be deferential, figure out what had to happen in order to get the responses she wanted to hear out of him. 

“C’mon,” he pushed. “You’re quiet. That can’t be a good thing.”

“We’re almost home,” she said, and he released his hand from her grasp to rest it on her thigh. 

“Okay,” he said, biting his lower lip as he took the exit. “Tell me later then.”

“I liked seeing you back there,” she blurted. “You stopped being so far inside your head for a minute and got into it.” 

He chuckled, and she hoped he couldn’t see her blush. “I liked seeing you back there, too. You looked cute.” Jess put on his blinker to turn left, and a shiver ran through her.  _ But home is right. _

“Where are we going?” Rory said, sitting up straight in the seat. Jess’s hand slipped off her thigh and onto the steering wheel. 

“Rory,” Jess rolled his eyes. 

“Jess, I’m serious - “ and then it clicked. They were facing the lake.  _ Oh.  _ She fell silent, letting all the questions and thoughts rush over her head for the moment. 

“Well, you didn’t want to do it in public and we can’t go back to Luke’s and I’m sure as hell not doing it front of your house - “

“Yeah, no, I got it, Jess.”

“You don’t want to.”

“I want to, I just wasn’t expecting - here, now, the car.”

“Having second thoughts?”

“I’m getting the feeling we’re Ray and Julie on the beach.”

He parked by the water’s edge, taking the key out of the ignition. 

“I don’t think we have to worry about any hook-handed men out here.” He nodded towards the backseat. “Or back there.”

* * *

Unlike with Dean, where couches and Miss Patty’s bean bags had been the most comfortable places for canoodling, Jess favored his car. It made sense: in addition to the privacy factor, Jess’s car was surprisingly much more comfortable than any other location they had at their disposal. Like the new boyfriend, she’d been trying to get used to the new location for the past few months. She could sense everything in that backseat when they were together - the rich mix of Jess’s cigarettes, sweat, and tiny air fresheners; the cool, wet window when her skin pressed up against it; the curves of doors and seats that contorted her into new positions. Their bodies couldn’t seem to get any closer in the tiny space, and simultaneously thrilled her and concerned her. 

“I really should get back, Jess. It’s late.”

“C’mon, Gilmore,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “We don’t have many nights like this.”

She tilted her head back, the moist window dampening her hair. She involuntarily opened her mouth at the temperature confusion, his warm hands roaming up her torso and to her back. She closed her eyes to fully experience this, to forget about everything outside of this car. 

“My mother is going to be wondering where I am.”

He pulled away from her neck, and his hand retreated to her jeans waistline. “You’re a real buzzkill, Gilmore. A book tease and a - ”

She leaned in to kiss him, which he quickly pulled away as soon as she got close. It was their game, in moments like this - she  _ wanted  _ that next kiss, she  _ needed  _ that next kiss to know he was still here. She tried again - he pulled away. She smiled, to which he quickly responded with a peck on her lips. 

“‘I’m the tease?”

He adjusted their posture so that he held her and she could rest her head on his chest. It wasn’t quite dark enough or clear enough out of their windows to see anything outside, but the two of them could hear the noise outside. The sounds of the lake, the chill of a Connecticut winter, their hearts calming down and their breath almost in sync with each other. As Jess rubbed her arm, they sat in silence, taking in this moment as if they wouldn’t get another one like this.  _ They probably wouldn't, for a while. _

“What are you thinking about now?” she said, looking up at his face. In the moonlight, he looked a little tired or sad, lost in deep thought. 

“Hm?” he said, sitting up and straightening out his back. “Just thinking about how easy it could be to go right now.”

“Go where?”    
“Anywhere. Head down to New York. Or out West.”

“You’re thinking of Keroac’ing it on me?”

“We could go together.”

“Where would we go?” she said, wrapping her arm to squeeze him. 

“We could go anywhere you want,” he said, gently kissing her head. “Don’t you just want to get out of here?”

She squirmed a little bit to face him directly. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” His hands started back to her waist, gently tugging at her shirt. She let him. 

“Yeah, of course. My mom and I -”

“No moms, Gilmore,” he said, lifting her shirt up and above her head in the process. “No moms, just you and me, and being anywhere but there.” He sighed. “Sometimes I think it’d be easier.”

She stayed quiet, holding his gaze as she now sat on him. They were both watching each other, waiting for some defense to fall down - or possibly to come back up. 

“I feel that way, too, sometimes.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. Like, maybe this doesn’t all make sense to go off and try. LIke, I have this plan, and I’m going to get to be a journalist, and I’m going to go everywhere.”

“Where’s everywhere?”

“Bahrain. Kabul. Bangkok. Moscow. Lima. Buenos Aires. I want to go everywhere.”

“We can do our own personal  _ Motorcycle Diaries _ , making our way from the U.S. border down to the tip of Argentina.”

“Even make our way to the Alaskan frontier, be our own Alexander McSupertramp.”

“Sit under the Alaskan sky, in a deep dark winter, with the stars above us, and only our bodies for warmth…” His hand was on her bra now, and she tried to stay focused on the conversation.

“I do want those things. I mean, I’m not going to do the whole thing, obviously, and I don’t know how I could do those things with all the other things, but I do want those things, even for just a…”

“I get it. Maybe we could - go this summer?”   
“What?” 

“Well, my mom and I - “

“No moms.”

“We have a plan for a trip to Europe. We’re going to backpack to all the good places, the trip my mother never got to do.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Oh, you know - we’ll spend some nights in Paris, being the Lost Generation. We’ll get to Rome, hike up one of the hills and give up halfway to go to the Vatican and make fun of their silly outfits.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“But - before that - ”

“- Before Yale - ”

“- don’t jinx it! But maybe we could do something? Drive cross-country and see the Pacific Ocean?”

He took his other hand to her own, moving it away from his side and closer to his waistline and onto his zipper. She could feel him through the fabric, and she found herself counting the layers between her hand and him. And then she turned back to the conversation. “Make our way up to Alaska.”

“I like the idea of that.”

“I’ll save all my paychecks for it.”

She smiled - there was something almost real about it in the moment, not quite noticeable to her in this moment. There was that feeling of nostalgia as if she already knew it wasn’t going to happen. 

“Hey, Jess?”

“You’re not over me already, are you?”

“No, I was just - if you wanted to…” she was flustered, and it felt difficult to string together sentences like this. 

“You, at a loss for words?”

She took a deep breath. “The zipper. My hand. On the zipper.”

He lifted her hand, but she grabbed it and let it fall back down. “No. I mean. I don’t know. I’m not.” She wasn’t even sure what it was she wanted to say. 

But he seemed to know. “You haven’t - before.”

She shivered. “No.”

“Not with Dean?”   
“No,” she said, causing an involuntary reflex at hearing his name from Jess. “And growing with - well, I’ve heard a lot of Trojan Man jokes.”

“And you’re waiting…”

“No, I’m not waiting.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not waiting for anything in particular. I’m just - I don’t want  _ that _ to happen here.”

“Well, we can’t really go anywhere else.”   
“I didn’t mean that. I just…we can work up to that, right?” 

He smiled, and she wished she could read his thoughts. “You’re worried you’re not going to be good at this.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, pulling the zipper down. 

“I think I can do the tutoring here,” he chuckled. 

* * *

The experience left her slightly impressed with herself, if a little confused. She wasn’t sure what to think, or whether or not she had actually done it correctly. Lorelai had informed her of the basics, but it was very different from a theoretical discussion. She had nervously giggled a lot, which was a noise Rory had never expected outside of her mouth. But Jess seemed pleased enough with her performance.  _ Those were sounds I never expected out of him either.  _

“Hey, Jess?”

“I know, I know. It’s late, let’s get going.”   
“No, I mean - thanks. For taking the wrong turn back there?”   
He chuckled, his whole body shaking up against her. “Alright, now you’re definitely tired if you’re telling me the truth.” He hugged her tightly, and she closed her eyes just for a moment.  _ I wish every moment could feel as safe and secure as this one _ , she thought.  _ Just us against the world for a bit.  _

They untangled themselves from each other, Jess helping her back into her clothes into the tiny space of the backseat. It seemed strange, the space shrinking as they both came back into focus on the world around them. She slipped out of the car, getting the cool Stars Hollow air back onto her before she slipped into the front seat, buckling herself in. 

Jess slipped in through his driver’s side door, put the key in the ignition, and started them back home. It wasn’t a long drive to the Gilmore house, but far enough that his right hand in her left seemed to keep her warm the whole ride back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bumped up the rating a tad for this week's entry. thanks for reading!


	8. it’s what i want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode S4E21: Last Weeks Fights, This Weeks Tights

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” Rory huffed. “You won’t go away.” 

Having one ex-boyfriend bring up complicated feelings had been enough for one day. Having a second one show up - this one being entirely unexpected and bringing up a whole new set of feelings - and given her slightly buzzed state of mind - was giving her a headache. 

Jess looked lost in the moment, and he certainly didn’t fit in here.  She didn’t even recognize him fully. He’d filled out the oversized leather jacket so that it actually sat on him properly; he'd grown out his hair; and his face looked...tan? It’d only been a few months since his last arrival had totally derailed her. She had let that last moment flash back into her mind for weeks - when she could’ve said anything she’d wanted to say to him, and instead let him have the last words. 

She knew there was a possibility he was coming back to town for Liz and TJ’s wedding. She had prepared herself after the last time for seeing him in Stars Hollow again, even if that preparation meant totally refusing to acknowledge him. But she didn’t expect him to show up to the wedding, given everything she knew about their relationship. _And he certainly wasn’t supposed to show up at Yale! Yale is my turf!_

But now that he was back,  _ again _ , and standing in her dorm, she found what she thought had been closed open again. It was the fact that she still felt things when she looked at him - all the emotions that had been bundled up in their relationship, and the words she was never able to say. With Dean, it was easy to say no, even if she  _ did  _ feel the slightest twinge of something when they were together. With Jess, she didn’t know if she could let all these feelings - the good, the bad, the scared, the ridiculous, the intrigue, the frustration, the nostalgia - stay bottled up inside. 

“Rory.” 

She snapped back into focus, looking at a scared Jess. “What do you want?” 

“I don't know. I just wanted to see you, talk to you. I just…” 

“What?” She found herself holding her breath after she said it, unsure of what she wanted him to say next.  _ He might say those three words again.  _ They were words she had wanted to hear him say out loud - words that on some level had justified what he had done in walking away, and knowing that she had at least meant something to him. But they were also words that were as useless then as they were now. Those three little words that she had always thought of as bringing a relationship to the next level, that had been an opening with Dean (one she had equally wrestled with at the time) were three little words that brought closure to everything they had. _ I don’t want to hear it again.  _

“Come with me.” He said it so breathlessly, she would later swear that she had heard him wrong. 

“What?”  _ That couldn’t have been what he said. _

“Come with me.” 

“Where?”  _ Was this really all he came here to say?  _

“I don't know...away!”  His frustration punctuated her the way his entire attitude had when they were together, and she found herself returning to old defenses. 

“Are you crazy?” 

“Probably. Do it. Come with me. Don't think about it.” 

“I can't do that.” She pushed through her door and walked into the bedroom.  _ Don’t think about it _ , she scoffed.  _ It’s not that easy to just not think about these things anymore.  _

“You don't think you can do it but you can. You can do whatever you want.” 

She couldn’t tell if what he was saying was still scripted. It certainly wasn't what she was expecting him to say, but it felt as crazy as the things he had said before. Part of her wondered if he had asked her to come with him on that bus nearly a year ago now, if she would've said yes. _Probably not_ , she thought. But her reaction then might not have been as tough now. So much of Jess before had been her falling backwards, figuring out where she could fit herself in when holding him up.  _ I can’t just do whatever I want. And neither can you. You know that.  _

“It's not what I want.” 

“It is. I know you.”

“You don't know me!” She raised her voice.  _ If you wanted to know me, you would’ve stayed.  _ That thought tripped her up for a moment, and she felt herself immediately wanting to shut it back down. She was only glad that she didn't say it out loud. 

“Look, we'll go to New York. We'll work, we'll live together, we'll be together. It's what I want. It's what you want, too.” 

“No!” 

She flashed back to that day in New York - it felt like ages ago now - wandering Manhattan with him, running in and out of hole-in-the-wall stores. She flashed back to nights in the house with him, the kind of living they never got to have but that she could always daydream about. Working together, living together, being together - that had been a dream, once upon a time. And it had been the kind of things they both wanted, even if they didn't always communicate them to each other verbally. But it hadn't been realistic then, and it certainly wasn't something she wanted to pick up and drop off now. Just because he could see it didn't mean it was what she wanted. 

“I want to be with you, but not here. Not this place, not Stars Hollow. We have to start new.”

“There's nothing to start!” For her, anyway. There was nothing new available to her, even after this year at Yale. She wanted to start new, but not with Jess, not with him. And she wanted to start new _here._

“You're packed. Your stuff is all in boxes. It's perfect. You're ready. And I'm ready. I'm ready for this. You can count on me now. I know you couldn't count on me before, but you can now. You can.” He was choking up as he said it, tears welling into his eyes. She’d never seen him so broken before, clearly reeling over whatever had happened at his mother’s wedding. It was the Jess she’d been seeing for so long, now saying nonsense that she hadn’t seen before. 

“No!” 

“Look, you know we're supposed to be together. I knew it the first time I saw you two years ago, and you know it, too. I know you do.”

“No, no, no, no, no!” If she could say it enough times, maybe it would stop. She didn’t want to go backwards, she didn’t want to relive these feelings again, she didn't want to feel like she did a year ago. She had said what she needed to say on that damned phone call. And no matter how many times he would come back and say what it was that she needed to have heard, it wouldn't make up for the fact that her world have moved on. It had taken her so long to get over Jess, and things were just starting to feel good and steady for herself. She had dated other people. She was seeing - well, she wasn’t seeing Dean, but they had worked things out.  _ Why does it always have to come back to him? Why are we so hung up on each other, on a half-hearted fling that barely made it to a relationship?  _

“Don't say ‘no’ just to make me stop talking or make me go away. Only say ‘no’ if you really don't want to be with me.” 

She paused for a moment, just long enough for everything to pass through her head. For so long, a part of her had wanted to be with him. And even his offer now, what enticed her was not that it was with him: it was that she could be more than this. She wanted to travel everywhere, see it all, be a part of something bigger than herself. The backpacking trip through Europe with her mom last summer had been just a small sliver. And it was something she couldn’t do with her mom. 

Here Jess was, offering that on a silver platter. Not only that, but he had done it - he’d disappeared and come back to Stars Hollow, for her.  _ Well, for Liz.  _ And he loved her. And he'd made something of himself that was entirely his own, or at least she assumed he had. And a small part of her wanted to run away and admire that in him, but it wasn't the same. 

She knew if she said what he wanted to hear - what she always tried to do in their relationship - she could make it work. Even if there was this small, tiny, minuscule part of her that did want to be with him, it wasn't going to happen. She couldn't let it happen. It felt the final nail in the coffin of the relationship they never truly got to end. A year later, a year after he had run away too - she wasn’t seeing Jess - her Jess, the Jess. She’d moved on, and this was some hail-Mary pass to get something that they couldn’t get back again. 

“No!” She looked into his eyes, trying not to take in how his face was cracking again. _Thank God, he's actually hearing me this time._

He relented, and he walked out. Thankfully, the tears started falling after she closed the door and leaned up against it. And they kept coming, and coming, as she packed up the boxes around her - clothes, books, leftover knick-knacks from the other roommates.  _ I’m moving on _ , she thought.  _ I have to move on. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in getting this next chapter up! Things have been extremely busy in the new year and I've been so exhausted with no time for writing. 
> 
> You'll also notice I now have an official chapter count up - there are three more, and an epilogue. Everything else is drafted, just needs editing. I'll return to my regularly scheduled postings on either late Friday or Saturday nights EST. 
> 
> And as always, let me know if you have any feedback! this was a rather difficult scene to jump back into and figure out what's going through rory's mind.


	9. i know this is hard for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somewhere around Season 5, Episode 15: “Jews and Chinese Food”. what's important is that luke/lorelai are still broken up.

As her mother parked the car, Rory was running through her day schedule in her head. Since she’d stayed overnight in Stars Hollow to comfort Lorelai through a superheroes movie marathon, she was already running later than she’d like for class. If she ate in true Gilmore fashion, she could make the trip back to Yale quickly enough to get just enough time to stop by her bedroom, pick up her books, and have enough time to get another coffee before Professor Miller’s 

After that, she’d have a quick break to catch up before her next class, and then swing by the paper for the staff meeting. It would be another late night while she was on copyediting duty, but cheering up her mother was always worth it. 

“So I was thinking about our rewatch of  _ Batman,  _ and I noticed how in that scene where Jack Nicholson falls...” Lorelai stopped short of the front door to Weston’s. “Uh-oh.”

“What uh-oh?”

She swiveled to face Rory. “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Danes, Rory. Ess-Jay is ere-hay.”

“What?”

“Ess-Jay is ere-hay.” 

“Are you speaking Pig Latin?”

“Well you didn’t get the  _ Hamlet  _ reference and I am trying not to make a scene.”

“Jess - wait, Jess is here?” 

“Leather jacket, gelled hair, Patrick Swayze in  _ Dirty Dancing _ energy? I think that’s him.” 

“Jess Mariano?”   
“Ex-boyfriend, crashed your car, assaulted you in Kyle’s bedroom?”

“I just don’t understand why he’d be here.” 

Lorelai peered into the window. “It looks like he’s here with Liz. God, these Danes are multiplying.”

_ Makes sense _ , thought Rory. Given Luke’s poor demeanor and the declining quality of his food, even his sister would be looking elsewhere. But Lorelai had been trying to avoid Luke and Liz in good measure, given their separation. 

“We don’t have to go in.” Lorelai looked down the street. “We can try Al’s - he looks open. Or Sookie can whip something up for you at the inn.”

“It’s fine, Mom. I can go in and grab something for us if you want to stay out here.” 

“It’s not awkward?”

“You intimidate Elise. And Liz’ll be nice to me. It’s not a problem.” 

“I meant Jess.”

Rory squeezed her mother’s hand. “I’ll be okay.” 

“You’re the best, kid,” she said, playfully punched Rory’s arm. “If you gotta go, go with a smile.” 

Rory reached for the door handle, taking a short, quick inhale before pulling it towards her. Truth be told, she hadn’t given much thought to Jess after he’d last showed up. She had been mildly shaken by his proposal at her door, but things were so confusing in the days after that: sleeping with Dean, jetting off to Europe, that whole mess of a summer and fall. And then there were so many things happening at Yale, she hadn’t the time to dwell on the past.

There had been one brief moment in Europe where she’d given some time to think about him. She and Emily were taking a long weekend in Venice, and Rory had snuck off to Harry’s Bar to celebrate with all the historic greats. And as she did anytime Hemingway crossed her desk, she thought of a young Jess reading his bibliography in Stars Hollow.  _ God, that boy read too much Ernest.  _ At the time, tipsy from her third ridiculously expensive Bellini, she laughed at the irony of Jess offering to whisk her away, and yet she went off and did it anyway that summer without him. Ever so briefly, she imagined him sitting next to her at the bar, toasting to their escape from Connecticut and running away from all their problems. But just as quickly as that daydream had come to her, it disappeared into the many lonely afternoons exploring European cities. And upon return to Stars Hollow, that moment with Jess blended in with all the other things in spring: no longer important or meaningful. 

She’d closed that chapter with him. And so had he, quite frankly. She hadn’t heard anything about him - not that she wanted to. It seemed odd for him to just drop back into Stars Hollow after the antics around Liz and TJ’s wedding. She had been a little proud of him for returning and going to the wedding, but it seemed a fine ending to his story here.  _ Why return now?  _ Not that there had ever really been a reason for him to return, but it seemed less likely now than ever. 

The little doorbell up top rang as she stepped in the doorway. It was busier than normal - Luke on the warpath had caused many customers to find an alternative. But Rory saw him right away. Sitting at a table towards the back, Jess and Liz were deep in conversation. 

She looked one second too long, and his eyes met hers. If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. She tried equally as hard to control her face.  _ Am I blushing? Do I look okay? Is he going to run again?  _

She felt the slightest flutter in her stomach as he looked away, satisfied in whatever had noticed about her. The flutter was not one of joy or sadness - it was just a flutter, a feeling, a moment of recognition and a quick flash of the last three years. Hoping this would be the last of it, Rory stepped up to the counter. She was determined not to look back. 

“Hey, Elise. Can I get two coffees to go?” Elise was new in town, a short redhead with who was terribly shy with customers. The girl nodded and turned away to the coffee maker. As she worked, Rory fumbled around in her purse to distract herself from turning around. But Liz’s voice was like nails to a chalkboard. It was impossible not to overhear every word being said at that back table. 

“And you’re doing okay? I was so surprised that you called, especially so unexpected like this. I’m sorry TJ couldn’t make it. He is  _ not  _ a morning person.”

“I’m doing fine, just stopping through town and thought I’d call.” 

“I’m really glad you came back. Did I tell you TJ and I bought a new house, here in town? Oh, wait ‘till you see it! It’s like the place we used to dream about back in the city. There’s a room for you, too, you know. Don’t have all your stuff from our old place, but TJ is working on a real nice bookcase for your collection.”

“That’s nice.” 

“And you’re so close now! You should really come back more often. ” 

“I’m glad you’re happy, Mom.”

Rory and Jess had talked about Liz a few times, when he was particularly vulnerable and let it spill out by accident. It came out more in bouts of frustration, but every little crumb made Rory feel sad for the boy she knew - this boy who just wanted validation and love. She knew it had been hard for him growing up, and that he blamed Liz for most of it. 

Rory hadn’t spent a ton of time with Liz since her arrival in Stars Hollow, but she’d gotten the sense that she’d turned a new leaf with TJ. Luke seemed to have forgiven her for some things - how much he actually knew of Jess’s childhood in New York was unclear. And based on what her mother had told her, Rory knew Jess was at least working towards forgiveness as well. Still, Rory had this nagging feeling of disliking her on principle. Out of some weird protection or loyalty to Jess, she kept her distance. 

“Maybe TJ and I can take a trip down to visit you? Not right now of course, with the house and all. But maybe in the summer? I bet we can even get Luke to join us, show him around town.” 

“Don’t make too many promises,” she heard Jess say casually. “But I think we could do that.”

It intrigued Rory, rather than frightened her, that he was back in town. His cool, even tone was a measured Jess that she’d never seen. True, she’d never seen him around Liz. This could just be how it always was with them - harsh with the rest of the world, but guarded with her. Or maybe Lorelai had told her about all the “transformations” he’d seemed to have made with everyone else last time he was around.  _ Maybe he’s not the only one who’s turned a new leaf. _

Elise handed her the two cups of coffee. Rory, not wanting to push the young girl any further, handed over the cash and dropped a few coins in the tip jar. 

“Rory! Is that you?”

She cringed at the sound of Liz’s voice now directed at her.  _ I’ve been caught.  _ Rory slowly turned around with a brilliantly fake smile. 

Liz smiled excitedly, waving her over to the table. Rory obliged. “Oh, I know we’re not supposed to be talking right now but I really miss seeing you and your mom around the diner. My big brother’s food just doesn’t taste the same right now.” Liz gestured at Jess. “And my boy’s in town, so he needs good food. You know Jess. Of course you know Jess.”

“I know Jess,” Rory smiled politely. Jess returned the politeness, nodding while glancing up at her. 

“He’s headed up to Boston for some business and decided to stop here on the way this morning. Awfully nice of him, don’t you think? Gotta butter him in order to get him to come by more often.”

Rory looked at Jess, dropping the smile only slightly. He didn’t seem very phased by Rory’s presence at all. Instead, he was holding tightly to his cup, eyes fastened onto his mother. She could tell he was uncomfortable, having torn up pieces of napkin in his lap with his spare hand.  _ He used to do that a lot, _ she thought to herself. A little part of her wanted to reach out to him, offer him a little comfort.  _ I know you _ .  _ I know this is hard for you.  _

“Never been much of a talker this one,” Liz broke the silence. “How are you doing, Rory? How’s your mom?”

“She’s holding up okay. And I’m good, busy semester and all.” 

“That’s good to hear. Look, I’m sure this will all blow over soon. My brother’s stubborn, but he and your mom are good for each other. And you - you’re doing good at school? Jess, you know she’s studying English? I’ve read some of her stuff in the school paper. That secret society article was pretty cool.” 

Liz, as Rory had learned, was not good at sensing the awkwardness in a room. Even if Jess was preoccupied, Rory felt the unspoken tension in the room now that she was a part of the conversation. There were so many things to pick apart here - the awkwardness of Liz and Rory, of Liz and Jess, of Jess and Rory - and Rory wasn’t sure what could be said. That flutter was back now, more of a small tightening in her stomach. 

“It was a hell of a weekend,” Rory shrugged. “Well, I really ought to be on my way back to campus now.” She held up the coffee cups to reaffirm her point. 

“Aw, well, can’t keep you too long. Give my best to your mom, really.” 

“Good to see you,” said Jess, taking his eyes away from his mother. He was genuinely smiling now, that crooked half-smile he would do when they were alone together. It tripped her up to see her now, this genuine kindness toward her. His words were short, and he was still very guarded toward his mother. But it was a change. It was like everything was truly behind them. 

“You too.” She felt the sudden urge to reach out her hand, but thought better. She turned back to Liz. “And I will.” 

Rory nodded to them both, heading back towards the door. She took one last look back at the table, giving a sad smile back to Jess. But he wasn’t looking at her this time. He was still sitting, clutching his cup. It was good to see him working his way toward some kind of happiness.  _ Growing into himself.  _ As she pushed through the door, she felt that it was to be the end of her and Jess’s tumultuous story, it was a good note to end them on.  _ And it was good to see him. _

“You were in there awhile,” said Lorelai, stepping back into view. 

“Well, you know Liz.”

“Did it go okay?”

Rory nodded. “Elise didn’t say a word. So, getting back to Jack Nicholson...” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it felt pretty important to me that there was at least one scene in between 4.21 and 6.10 where rory/jess meet and it doesn't end poorly. i always found it hard to believe that she would react so calmly to him showing up in 6.10 after where they left things off in season 4. 
> 
> spoiler alert: we'll jump back to chapter 1 next week! as always, happy to hear feedback.


	10. it was all you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode S6E8: Let Your Balalaikas Ring Out

“Fine,” said Logan, yanking out bills from his breast pocket and throwing them on the table. “That'll cover the bill, cab. Do whatever you want. It's your choice.” He walked off and she watched him go. A few people in the restaurant were looking over at her - they’d been loud, and anyone who’d recognize Logan in the Hartford community was probably whispering right about now. 

_ It’s your choice. Everything’s my fucking choice.  _ Rory turned back to the table, sighing in frustration. Everyone had been telling her that, since June. And yet it didn’t feel like much of a choice at all to have both boyfriends ( _ ex-boyfriends, I suppose now)  _ walk away from her. 

For the first time, she felt old. She’d joked earlier that evening that she was feeling grown-up, being able to say things like “old friends.” But this was like the weight of the last five months crashing down around her. She didn’t feel mature or fancy or straight out of  _ Age of Innocence _ , but old. 

_ Well,  _ she thought.  _ Maybe I do feel a little Edith Wharton. Even my literary references are out of sync.  _

She wanted to damn the both of them, Jess and Logan, for ruining the evening. But a part of her blamed herself instead for letting the whole mess together in the first place. Maybe it was the makeup or the hair or the clothes or Yale or the fight or maybe - as Jess suspected - it was the boyfriend who’d just walked out on her. 

Jess’s words stung.  _ This isn't you, Rory.  _ Somehow, he always knew how to generate that stupid flutter in her stomach, though this time it was more of a rock rattling inside. He was right - when he asked her point-blank, she didn’t know what happened. But she didn't quite feel like herself anymore. Or maybe this was the person she was growing into.

Her mother had tried to tell her this, but it didn’t seem like a permanent change then. In June, when she’d made the decision to take some time from Yale, it was a chance to take a step back. 

She found herself watching the last five months of her life in slow motion. Everything from Honor’s engagement party on that stupid yacht onwards. Fast-forwarding through the late nights with Colin and Finn, doing god-knows-what at all hours of the night. The afternoons gossiping with Tweenie Halpern. The breakfasts with Emily and the maid. The endless days that spilled over into weekends, one event after the next, and even her times of hooking up with Logan and summering on the Vineyard - had just been filler. Weeks flew by, books piled up by her bed, and most of her Yale friends grew distant. Even her twenty-first birthday had been something so fake and over the top and so strange. She was run down and ragged, a wisp of her former self that was mostly what everyone else was shaping her to be. 

She started looking forward, too, at her calendar for the next few weeks. She had the Russian tea tomorrow, with the balalaikas she’d personally selected for the DAR event. She had community service again next week, getting down to those last few hours.  _ Should’ve told Jess about that, he would’ve a field day.  _ She and Paris were supposed to meet up after midterms -  _ I guess that’s any day now?  _ Lane and Hep Alien had a gig in a few weeks, and she was going to film it. As she racked her brain for calendar events, she found herself coming up empty. There wasn’t anything of substance - anything for her. 

When she left Yale in May, it was because she wasn’t working towards anything anymore. She had entered Yale with such a clear vision, and had done so much to move that dream of being a journalist forward. Everything had felt like it was over - that drive that had pushed for so long to strive for something bigger than herself was wiped out by Mitchum. She’d been running towards something that turned out to be a wall. And sure, she thought she would spend a few weeks lingering around that wall by atoning for her Melville antics and finding that new direction, because eventually everyone gets to the top of it. 

But what had she done with it? She’d squandered it. Jess had published a book and had a job. For all Logan’s bitching about the future, at least he had something planned come June. She was in Hartford, spending all day with a bunch of housewives, being treated like a child with her grandmother’s rules and the pool house being “exterminated”. Everything was happening around her. She felt very old, and very pretty, and very lost. Her life had disappeared, and Logan - the one thing that felt like it had been going right - had just walked out. 

_ This isn’t you. You wanted more than this!  _ she heard the voice in her head screaming, morphing from Jess’s into her own.  _ I want more than this!  _

She couldn’t go anywhere - certainly not back to Logan’s after this fight.  _ God, I can’t stand him right now.  _ She didn’t want to go home to her grandparents’, either. She didn’t want to see the dress that Emily would lay out for her for tomorrow’s DAR event, or deal with incessant instructions. What she really wanted was to talk to her mother. She could feel the tears building up, her face turning red - 

“Are we waiting on the rest of the party to come back to order?”

Rory looked up from her fit of distress to a young waitress, pen in hand. The waitress seemed a little startled to see Rory as well, probably having watched the previous scene. 

“Uh, no,” said Rory, coming to her senses. “They had to step out.” She glanced at the menu. “Can I get a burger? Medium-well? And lots of fries?”

The waitress nodded. “It’ll be out in a minute.”

Rory reached for her glass and downed the rest of her drink. “And another one of these, too. Please.”

As the waitress walked away, she thought about calling Lorelai. She flipped open the phone, clicked through her contacts list to Lorelai’s name, and paused on it for a moment. She thought about telling her about this sudden decision to move out -  _ I guess that’s what I’ve decided to  _ \- but Lorelai had made it pretty clear Rory had sided with the wrong Gilmore. Rory thought better of herself, clicking a few names up. She listened to it ring.

"Hey, Rory!" Lane’s voice was perky, yet nervous.

"Hey, Lane. How are you doing?"

"Things are alright. I'm just closing up at Luke's - busy night, actually."

"Oh, cool."

There was an awkward pause, and Rory swore she could hear the slightest sigh on Lane’s part. "Is everything okay?"

Rory took a deep breath. "I need to ask you a favor."

"Okay."

"I know this is a lot to ask, and I totally understand if the guys will say no, but - "

"Rory, after all I’ve been through with Mama Kim, you can ask me for anything."

"Can I stay with you guys for a few days? I can't stay here with my grandparents anymore, and some stuff happened with Logan, and I can't stay with my mom, obviously - "

"Rory, of course, you can stay with me."

"Are you sure? Zack and Brian won't mind?"

"They'll get over it, they owe me one. It'll be like our middle school sleepovers all over again."

“Thanks, Lane.”

Rory picked up the bills on the table, sorting out the money.  _ I’ll need a cab to get to my car. And tip, obviously.  _ In Huntzberger fashion, Logan had left a huge amount for just Rory. She waved down the waitress. “Can I make that four burgers? To go?”

* * *

After the boys had dropped the remainder of the boxes off in Lane’s apartment, Rory plopped herself onto the bed. The anger and frustration that had been fueling her all afternoon had nearly depleted. 

“So, do you want to talk about it?” Lane said, pushing aside some boxes to sit next to her.    
“Not really. There’s not really anything to say.”

“But you’re out of your grandparents?”

“Yes, I am done with the Gilmores for good.”

“And you’re going back to Yale?”

“Working on it. I have an appointment with the dean tomorrow and we’re going to talk about it then.”

“And you and Logan are…?”

“Fighting, but we’ll figure that one out later.” 

“And you feel good about all that?” 

“So good. I’ve got big plans for tomorrow.” 

“I’m glad to hear it, Rory.” They hugged each other. “I’ll get started on dinner while you’re unpacking your stuff.”

Rory knew she should be spending this time finding some clean clothes and materials for tomorrow’s meeting with the dean. But she instead reached into her backpack, pulling out the novella Jess had given her. 

She had already read it through once by now, but it was one of those books that she wanted to read again, more fully. In the pages of  _ The Subsect,  _ she had the urge to return to their old practice of writing notes in the margin to communicate. As she read through, she found herself a bit sad that he hadn’t done anything similar to this particular copy.  _ Well, he did sign it,  _ she thought, brushing over the inscription.  _ That’s not the same thing.  _

It was a good book. It reflected a Jess she didn’t quite know anymore, but some of his teenage quirks showed through here. His prose had improved from those days and gave off less Holden Caulfield angst, as the main character traversed two coasts in understanding his family history. But the heart was still there. Though Jess had insisted the book was fiction, she found herself filling in the gaps of the stories she didn’t know in his life - where he’d gone after her senior year, how he’s been working on himself in the meantime, what he really thought of Stars Hollow. 

She was about halfway through the book when she was getting the nagging feeling of familiarity. There was a passage in particular, the main character’s ruminations on a friend from home, that struck a nerve.  _ I know this line. I’ve read this before.  _

Rory rummaged through the boxes from her grandparent’s house. Her jewelry box, ill-named for its few pieces of jewelry, could have been anywhere, but she figured Colin and Finn wouldn’t be so helpless. 

Finally, she found it. She opened its top, lifted up the small shelves inside it, and grasped the envelope from nearly three years ago. There had been a time for a few months where she pulled out the envelope everyday, reading its contents as the only reminder of the boy who had practically disappeared off the face of Stars Hollow. When he had returned her freshman year those two times, and professed his love and affection, she had pulled them out again in a sort of quaint, distant reminder of what they had been, trying to read into the lines. At that time, they’d felt like overkill, and she almost rid herself of them. But she couldn’t do it, and in the attempts to move on, had stuffed them back at the bottom of the jewelry box. 

She hadn’t shown them to anyone - not even Lorelai - when he gave them to her that Christmas. At the time, it had felt a little too personal - a little too much. She wasn’t sure what to make of them, other than it seemed specific to her but also about something bigger than herself. 

She pulled out the notebook papers, his handwriting still shaky and yet the ink as strong as if they were written yesterday. She held it beside the paragraph. Aside from some minor grammatical changes, it was nearly the exact same, except for the last three words: 

> _ My truths were spilt and scattered around me, incomprehensible out of context. She illuminated them. She saw them, said nothing, and weaved her truths in their place. Yet she frightened me because someone like that - who would admit her truth freely - would someday want the truth in return. And though she had seen them, what I had to give her seemed so small in comparison.  _
> 
> _ I knew one thing: that together, our truths had something in common. She was happy, and yet she still wanted. She wanted meaning from life, wanted moments, wanted experiences: that, I could give her. Most importantly, she wanted them for me, too. She was a girl with a future - one still coming, and one she was perhaps unready for just yet - and somehow, she wanted me there. I knew this. I could give her this. _
> 
> _ i love you. _

She folded the pages back into the envelope, placed it inside her book, and held it tightly to her chest. When he said that he couldn’t have written this without her, when he had said she had pushed him to be better as a person, when she had believed in him, she didn’t think about what that would mean. 

And here it was. Here forever, the words he had inscribed and gifted her years ago in some weird, hopeful, playful flirtation that she had read as for her - were his first pages. They had been enshrined in this book. 

In the context of  _ The Subsect _ , no one would read this as more than a lost friendship of the main character’s. But out of context, he had written this to her - for her. They had never quite seen each other as teenagers: she believed in a thing he could not yet see, and he saw her as a person so removed from everything else. And though he did know her better than anyone in his life, and she knew him better than anyone in his life, their imaginings of each other - their losses between the two - were never quite perfect. But they could see in each other, 

And though he didn’t know it, she needed those words now more than ever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter first (sans the subsect excerpt) so I'm really excited that it's finally here. definitely shot myself in the foot with the Christmas letter, though I knew it had to come back in some fashion. it's probably more me than jess, but it does borrow conceptually from jess's literary heroes. i hope this lives up to your expectations!
> 
> the epilogue is done and will be out next week - i plan to take a break from fic for a little bit for some other writing projects, but do hope to return to gilmore girls in the near future. thank you so much for reading - as always, i'd love to hear feedback!


	11. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode S6E10: He's Slippin’ ‘Em Bread... Dig?

> _ Hey, this might be weird but -  _

Rory stopped, saved the draft, and closed her phone.  _ Of course it would be weird. It would be weird, right? _ She put her phone into her pocket, getting back to her Weston’s candy cane coffee.  _ I don’t need to do this. It’s fine.  _

* * *

She’d spent most of December debating these draft texts in the casual moments. She blamed the impulse on it being the end of the year, the need to reflect on the happy gains and missed opportunities. She  had asked Luke for Jess’s phone number a few weeks when the thought first popped into her head. He had looked a little confused at first, like he couldn’t quite place why she would ask for such a thing. 

“I wanted to tell him I read his book,” Rory blurted, once she saw his reaction. It wasn’t a total lie - she had finished reading  _ The Subsect,  _ about a dozen times or so in the time between when she and Logan broke up and now. But it wasn’t really what she wanted to say to him. 

“Oh, right,” he said. He wrote it down on a napkin when he delivered her next coffee. “You might have to call a couple times. He doesn’t always pick up, and I can never get that damn voicemail to work.”

She held the napkin between her fingers, looking over the numbers carefully. “Sounds like Jess.”

“You sure about this.” Luke’s voice turned gruff as he leaned over the counter. 

Rory looked up from the napkin to Luke’s expectant face, raising her eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

He backed off, picking up a dish towel and casually flipping it over his shoulder. “I don’t know, just...you know how your mom is when Jess comes around. Just feeling cautious.” 

She smiled: she’d called his bluff. “It’s okay, Luke. Really, I’m fine.” She folded the napkin and stuck it in her purse. Maybe she didn’t need to text him after all - maybe having it in her hand was all she needed.

* * *

Rory wondered if Luke had told Jess about the conversation, if he’d be expecting her text or phone call all month. She wondered if he’d asked for her number in return, perhaps doing the same thing she was.  _ If he wanted to know _ , she thought,  _ he’d know.  _ If not from Luke mentioning off-hand that the wedding was back on in one of their conversations, then surely from Liz - it had been weeks, and the whole town knew she was back in Lorelai’s good graces. And when he’d wanted to know how she was doing before, he’d drummed it out of Luke.  _ He doesn’t want to know. _

Regardless of if he wanted to know, she wanted to tell him. It felt like the last part of her journey back to finding herself, like she had to prove to him that this was her now. She needed to share that she was going back to Yale in a few weeks. That she’d moved out of Emily and Richard’s and looking for a new apartment. That she’d earned herself a job at the  _ Gazette _ . That she’d read his book and was starting to read again. That she and Logan weren’t -

In any case, she hadn’t heard from him. Maybe he was okay with how they’d left it. He’d been okay leaving her in the lurch before, and that was when he  _ did _ love her. But that seemed cruel and callous - he wasn’t trying to run away from her that night. He’d been trying to find her. 

_ You were right. You know me better than -  _

She stopped herself. Emotional, gushy, sentimental - that wasn’t Jess. And she wasn’t going to word-vomit this onto him.  _ He’d find out if he wanted to. _ She’d see him again at some point.

> _ Finished reading your book. Thought -  _
> 
> _ Jess, I can’t thank you enough -  _

“Who are you texting? No phones on New Years’!” Lorelai interjected as she tried to swipe Rory’s phone out of her hand. 

“Well?”

It was New Years’ Eve, and she, Luke and Lorelai had their pick of Stars Hollow cuisine sprawled out across the Gilmore living room: crab rangoon from Al’s Pancake World; chicken tikka masala from Sandeep’s; desserts and a tin of candy cane coffee they’d snatched from Weston’s; and chocolate milkshakes, fries and burgers from Luke’s ( _ “They don’t taste the same if you make them here!” _ Lorelai had insisted). A Gilmore New Years’ celebration started so early in the day, it was hard to believe midnight hadn’t arrived yet. They’d gone through most of their traditions, celebrating the New Year as it passed through each time zone like they’d done since she was little: jumping off chairs with Denmark, setting up scarecrows to burn with Ecuador, eating grapes with Spain, opening all the windows in the house with the Philippines...it was always a bit over the top. But it was important for this year, having missed out on a whole summer of fun with her mom. This shortened winter break was them trying to squeeze them all in before Rory inevitably moved out again for Yale.

As it was getting closer to midnight, she found herself flipping through the channels to find the various New Years’ Eve parties and celebrations. Even though she was enjoying herself, she couldn’t help find her thoughts drifting to Jess.  _ Philadelphia isn’t that far away,  _ she thought, wondering what he was up to for the holidays. He didn’t come back to Stars Hollow - not that she was expecting him to, but it would’ve been nice to see him. Maybe he was thinking of her.  _ That’s ridiculous _ , she thought.  _ Well, not so ridiculous.  _

Lorelai was off in the kitchen to pour the last round of champagne flutes for the night, while Luke lay half-asleep on the couch. Rory stared at her open phone, looking at Jess’s name on the contacts list. She found herself reflecting on the last few months - his words still echoing in her mind,  _ I know you better than anyone.  _ She found herself glancing over at her bedroom, thinking how weird and yet perfectly normal it was to be back home. And all of a sudden the feeling was consuming her in this moment: she desperately wanted to text him. It was how it was supposed to be at the end of a year, when you reflected on everything good and everything bad and how far you’d come. And it wasn’t even about loving Jess or having feelings for him - in this moment, she just wanted to thank him for everything he’d done for her, for making this possible, the things he knew and the things he didn’t know. 

> _ When you showed up a few months ago I -  _

She put her phone back down again. It was getting too late now. Now it just felt cheesy, like any other New Years’ text. It wouldn’t get across the meaning. This wasn’t  _ When Harry Met Sally _ , some movie-perfect moment where she could confess all her feelings and wash away all the moments of the past year in a sweeping declaration of love _. It’s not a declaration of love anyway _ , she told herself.  _ It’s just - a thank you. A profession of thanks.  _

Lorelai loudly started counting down, shaking awake an exhausted Luke. “ONE MINUTE LEFT!” Rory grabbed a champagne flute and started screaming with her mother for the last minute of 2005. With each number, she found herself internally playing a modified version of “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not” with the timer on the screen. 

THIRTY:  _ I should text him. _

TWENTY-NINE:  _ Better not. _

TWENTY-EIGHT:  _ Now’s your chance, Gilmore.  _

TWENTY-SEVEN:  _ Let’s leave this in the old year.  _

TWENTY-SIX:  _ Let’s start over in the new year.  _

TWENTY-FIVE:  _ I don’t need this.  _

She locked eyes with her mom, taking in just how happy Lorelai was. And she should be - they were ending the year on a high note, after so much had gone wrong and so many things had gone right. This new year was going to bring so much happiness for the both of them: Lorelai getting married, Rory starting her junior year, everything getting back on track. 

“FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO,” they were shouting, hearts pounding, even Luke in his exhaustion mouthing along with them. 

At one, Lorelai and Rory jumped into the air, screaming in excitement as they gripped each other in a tight embrace and poured the champagne down their mouths. 

Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” blared from the tiny speakers as Lorelai leaned into kiss Rory’s cheek. “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart,” she drunkenly shouted in her best Al Pacino. 

Rory grimaced. It was Lorelai’s favorite New Years’ tradition, coming from Rory’s childhood misunderstanding of that fateful scene in  _ The Godfather, Part II _ . On its face, the kiss was just a kiss, as always. The tradition to end all traditions. But a sober Rory (in more ways than one) found that it stung a little this year. Lorelai was pretty drunk for a New Years’ celebration, but in this moment of reflection, and with all they’d been through this year, Rory couldn't help but feel like it had a deeper meaning. She bit her tongue - she didn’t realize how quickly the old year would spill into the new one, that everything maybe wasn’t long gone in her heart. 

“Happy New Years’, Mom.”

“Happy New Years’, kid.” Lorelai gave her a tight squeeze before making her way over to Luke. Rory smiled, watching his face light up even his tiredness, as Lorelai came to sit next to him on the couch. They kissed passionately, and Rory couldn’t help but find herself laughing at the two of them.  _ God, Mom looks so happy.  _ She was so glad to see them together, this gentleness and carefree attitude combined with a sudden intimacy between them.  _ I want that _ , Rory thought.  _ I want that for this new year.  _

Lorelai pulled her face away from Luke, turning back to Rory. “Come on! We’ve gotta go do the suitcases down the street with Babette and Morey!”

“Can we go to bed now?” said Luke, still half asleep on the couch as Lorelai yanked his arm.

“I’ll catch up with you guys in a second,” Rory said, sipping the last of her drink. “I need to top off the champagne.” 

She watched as Lorelai and Luke barreled out the door with the empty suitcases, and she could hear Babette and Morey doing the same. The joyousness and excitement outside made her feel a little giddy. Maybe what she needed was to get over this anxiety, to just put it out in the world. 

She pulled out her phone, wishing everything could be summed up in the few words she could send him. But it seemed she already had a text waiting for her:

> _ JESS: _
> 
> _ You’re going to have an amazing year.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've enjoyed writing this - I hope you all have enjoyed reading it! Thank you again for all of your support and comments. more in the future!


End file.
